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Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the “King of Rock and Roll”, he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century. His energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, led him to both great success and initial controversy.
Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family when he was 13 years old. His music career began there in 1954, recording at Sun Records with producer Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience. Presley, on rhythm acoustic guitar, and accompanied by lead guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, was a pioneer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. In 1955, drummer D. J. Fontana joined to complete the lineup of Presley’s classic quartet and RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage him for more than two decades. Presley’s first RCA Victor single, “Heartbreak Hotel”, was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. Within a year, RCA would sell ten million Presley singles. With a series of successful network television appearances and chart-topping records, Presley became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll.
In November 1956, Presley made his film debut in Love Me Tender. Drafted into military service in 1958, Presley relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. He held few concerts, however, and guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood films and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. In 1968, following a seven-year break from live performances, he returned to the stage in the acclaimed television comeback special Elvis, which led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of highly profitable tours. In 1973, Presley gave the first concert by a solo artist to be broadcast around the world, Aloha from Hawaii. Years of prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health, and he died suddenly in 1977 at his Graceland estate at the age of 42.
Recognized as the best-selling solo music artist of all time by Guinness World Records, Presley was commercially successful in many genres, including pop, country, R&B, adult contemporary, and gospel. He won three Grammy Awards, received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame. Presley holds several records, including the most RIAA certified gold and platinum albums, the most albums charted on the Billboard 200, the most number-one albums by a solo artist on the UK Albums Chart, and the most number-one singles by any act on the UK Singles Chart. In 2018, Presley was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Donald Trump.




















The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 9, 1865, also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States fought between the Union states (—states remaining in the federal union— or “the North”) and the Confederate states (—southern states that voted to secede— “the Confederacy” or “the South”). The central cause of the war was the status of slavery, especially the expansion of slavery into territories acquired as a result of the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican–American War. On the eve of the Civil War in 1860, four million of the 32 million Americans (nearly 13%) were enslaved black people, almost all in the South.
The practice of slavery in the United States was one of the key political issues of the 19th century; decades of political unrest over slavery led up to the war. Disunion came after Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 United States presidential election on an anti-slavery expansion platform. An initial seven Southern slave states declared their secession from the country to form the Confederacy. After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory they claimed, the attempted Crittenden Compromise failed and both sides prepared for war. Fighting broke out in April 1861 when the Confederate army began the Battle of Fort Sumter in South Carolina, just over a month after the first inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. The Confederacy grew to control at least a majority of territory in eleven states (out of the 34 U.S. states in February 1861), and asserted claims to two more. The states that remained loyal to the federal government were known as the Union. Large volunteer and conscription armies were raised; four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued.
During 1861–1862 in the war’s Western Theater, the Union made significant permanent gains, though in the war’s Eastern Theater, the conflict was inconclusive. In September 1862, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. To the west, the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy by summer 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg. Western successes led to General Ulysses S. Grant’s command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions, leading to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union General William Tecumseh Sherman and his march to the sea. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month Siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capitol of Richmond.
The war effectively ended on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Lee surrendered to Union General Grant at the Battle of Appomattox Court House, after abandoning Petersburg and Richmond. Confederate generals throughout the Southern states followed suit, the last surrender on land occurring on June 23. By the end of the war, much of the South’s infrastructure was destroyed, especially its railroads. The Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in a partially successful attempt to rebuild the country and grant civil rights to freed slaves.
The Civil War is one of the most studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States, and remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of particular interest is the persisting myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The American Civil War was among the earliest to employ industrial warfare. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. In total the war left between 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian casualties. President Lincoln was assassinated just five days after Lee’s surrender. The Civil War remains the deadliest military conflict in American history, and accounted for more American military deaths than all other wars combined until the Vietnam War. The mobilization of civilian factories, mines, shipyards, banks, transportation, and food supplies all foreshadowed the impact of industrialization in World War I, World War II, and subsequent conflicts.




















































































What did the 1970s couples often wear when they hung out together? Just check out these cool pics to see.






























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Up until the 1950s and 1960s, color photography was extremely rare, and so when we think about history prior to that time, we often envision it in black and white.
Colorized photos of French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt and English actress Ellen Terry in the 1860s
Today’s technology now enables us to colorize historical photos, giving us chances at imagination what the world really looked like back then. And it was truly spectacular.
These incredible portrait photos (most of them are celebrities) from the 19th century were colorized by seriykotik1970 that will blow you away.

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During World War II, a German officer had an affair with young Norwegian Synni Lyngstad. Once the war ended, he returned to his home country, unaware of the fact that Synni was pregnant with his child. Anni-Frid Lyngstad (or Frida, as she later became known) was born on November 15th, 1945 in the small town of Narvik in Norway. To escape post-war retributions dished out to “collaborators” and their children her mother took her to Sweden, Torshälla. When she was only two, Anni-Frid’s mother died. Her grandmother (who had always encouraged her to sing) became responsible for raising her.
When she was 13, Anni-Frid entered show business making her stage debut at a Red Cross charity in 1957. Since then, she has never stopped working in this business. When she was around 15, Anni-Frid met Ragnar Fredriksson. She became pregnant and had their first child, Hans, when she was only 16. Shortly after the baby’s birth, they married and had another child, Liselotte.
Since she was not willing to give up her career – which was doing well – to devote herself to her family, they ended up getting a divorce and Anni-Frid left the children in his care and her dear “Mamma” (her grandmother) to go to Stockholm. There, she met Benny Andersson and they soon became romantically involved.
Later, they teamed up with another couple, Björn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Fältskog. They became one of the most famous Pop groups of all times – ABBA.






















Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) was born during the American Civil War. In the 1880s, Johnston studied art in Paris and then returned home to Washington, DC, where she learned photography. She quickly established a national reputation as a professional photographer and businesswoman, with growing success in both the art and commercial worlds.
In the 1890s and early 1900s, as one of the first photojournalists, she provided images to the Bain News Service syndicate and wrote illustrated articles for many magazines.
In the 1910s, Johnston began to specialize in contemporary architecture and landscape photography, working for a time with photographer Mattie Edwards Hewitt in New York City. Here, we selected 30 amazing photographs took by Johnston in the 1900s and 1910s, which featuring everyday life in the United States from the early 20th century.






























(Images via Library of Congress)








































Here’s a selection of 19 lovely vintage photos of famous moms (Jackie Kennedy, Shirley MacLaine) with their kids, famous kids (Liz Taylor, Sophia Loren) with their moms and, in a few instances, famous kids with their famous moms.
According to LIFE magazine, the focus of the gallery is most decidedly not meant to suggest that famous moms are any more worthy of notice than any other mothers anywhere in the world who feed, clothe, encourage, protect, challenge and, ultimately, unconditionally love their children. Rather, this gallery is a simple acknowledgement that we’re more or less fascinated by fame.


















