📅 On this day
16 August
1977 · Elvis Presley died at Graceland
He was forty-two. The news broke in Britain during the evening and by the next morning every record shop in the country had a queue outside it. Within weeks he was back at number one, and he has barely been out of the charts since.
For a certain generation it was the first time a death felt like the end of your own youth rather than somebody else's — the man who had frightened your parents in 1956 was suddenly gone, and you were old enough to have children of your own.
Your turn
Where were you when you heard Elvis had died?
Also on this day
- 1960 — Cyprus became independent from Britain
- 1987 — A Northwest Airlines flight crashed at Detroit; a four-year-old girl was the sole survivor