Elvis hugged the startled Nixon

Such a surreal story that I had to share it on the anniversary. In case you already know it, I added a second. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

Kind of a fun and strange story from history today; we haven’t done one of these in a while.

Fifty-one years ago this morning, Elvis Presley showed up at the White House, bearing a handwritten letter he’d scrawled during a redeye flight.

He'd met Vice President Spiro Agnew, he wrote, and he now hoped to meet President Nixon, in order to volunteer to help out with “the problems that our country is faced with.”

He also asked if he could get some kind of credential as a “Federal Agent at Large.”

Wheels turned in the White House that morning. An aide wrote a memo to the president's chief of staff:

"If the President wants to meet with some bright young people outside of the Government, Presley might be a perfect one to start with."

“You must be kidding,” the chief of staff, H.L. Haldeman, wrote in the margins. But he approved the meeting.

Around 12:30 p.m., Presley arrived, met Nixon, and promptly began showing him the collection of police badges he'd brought with him.

Then, they talked about …