Today December 20
While at home enjoying the Christmas holiday in his newly bought mansion in Tennessee, Elvis Presley received his draft notice to join the Army. He received the papers to do a two year stint and tens of thousands of fans wrote in to the Army to have him kept out but Elvis wanted to go.
During his basic training, his mother died in August of 1958 and after that he was in Germany for eighteen months where he met the 14 year old Priscilla Beaulieu and would later become his wife.
In 1892, George Stillman and Alexander Brown of Syracuse, New York received the patent for the first inflatable tire for the automobile. Before this, tires were made of hard rubber which made for an uncomfortable ride on cobblestone roads.
One of the events leading up to the Civil War was South Carolina seceding from the Union on this day in 1860. Six states followed after that and when the hostilities began in 1861, four more states conceded and the Confederate States were formed.
