August 16- "The King" died...or didn’t he?

On August 16, 1977, the American Rock �n Roll singer Elvis Presley , �The King�, was discovered unconscious in a bathroom at his �Graceland� mansion in Memphis, Tennessee , rushed to hospital but pronounced dead on arrival.
This might not seem the most important daily news in a history forum, but history is also a history of culture, and Elvis� career certainly had a profound impact on Western culture.
Elvis was by far the most famous and most influential of American musicians who revolutionized pop music in the mid-fifties and initiated a youth movement that were to shake up the crusted structures of post-war Western society. The Fifties� Rock n� Roll started an avalanche that for a whole decade or more broke one taboo after another, from the simple teenage craze and the rebellion against the boredom and self-satisfied materialism of the first post-war decades, via the liberation of antiquated sexual morals and the break-up of anachronistic social conventions, to a politicized youth movement that during a few days in May 1968 threatened to overthrow a couple of European governments. Even if Western society and its fundamental institutions survived all the more serious dangers, it was a deep but liberating shock to the system.
Rock music, youth culture and anti-establishment politics were inseparable for a few years in the sixties, and Elvis helped to set it all in motion.

Elvis� story is told many times, his music is still ever present and a comprehensive account of his career can be found here:
Elvis Presley

It�s a strange phenomenon that the lasting visual image of Elvis is that of an over-weight, bloated and rather sad figure in a white jump-suit on a stage in Las Vegas, but it tells the real story of the last years of Elvis� life. Plagued by health and drug problems, he was only a pale shadow ( metaphorically speaking) of his heydays in the late 50s, and it came to no one�s great surprise when his death was announced.



The late King

The true causes of his death are still clouded in mystery; various versions are in circulation, heart-attack, kidney-problems, drugs or a combination of all of those.
Many of his fans still today refuse to believe that the �King� has died at all. A whole genre of newspapers in the USA lives on   recurrent �Elvis sightings� and conspiracy theorists have come up with a whole list of possible explanations, from extra-terrestrial abduction to CIA cover-ups.
However, if you are planning to report any sightings, it�s time to hurry up .Elvis would be seventy by now, and��..




What else happened on this day?     

1513 An invasion force led by Henry VIII of England and Emperor Maximilian numbering 30,000 strong, defeated the French at Guinegatte, France, in the �Battle of the Spurs�. The battle received its name because the defeated French cavalry fled the field, many allegedly losing their spurs. A second version suggests that the French ran so fast that only their spurs could be seen over the dust. (Thanks, John Herrmann from About)

1960 The former British crown colony Cyprus gained independence. The Greek-Orthodox Archbishop Makarios becomes its first president. ( Not much seems to have happened afterwards. Does anybody know any more details of Cyprus� history after 1960?)

2003 The former Ugandan dictator, and alleged cannibal, Idi Amin died in exile in Saudi Arabia. The former officer of the British Colonial Army terrorised his country from 1971-1979, killing more than 400.000 fellow country-men during his brutal reign.

Full list:

Wikipedia