Elvis Presley was found dead at his home in Graceland in 1977 [GETTY/EXPRESS]
Elvis Presley, the boy from Tennessee, had grown into an icon of 20th century culture, with a voice, style and hip swivel that entranced a generation.
In all he had 18 number ones, one more than The Beatles, including evergreen hits such as Heartbreak Hotel, Are You Lonesome Tonight and Jailhouse Rock.
The Daily Express reported the news under the stark headline, “Elvis is dead”.
New York-based reporter Brian Vine wrote: “Elvis Presley, the King of Rock, died in hospital last night after being taken ill at his home.
“The 42-year-old star was found unconscious at his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee.
"He was driven to the Baptist Hospital in a fire brigade ambulance and doctors fought for 30 minutes in a vain attempt to save him.”
The first bulletin on his condition said Elvis had breathing difficulties but that was followed within an hour by the news that he had died.
Attention immediately switched to the cause of death, with the hospital saying that Presley’s doctor George Nichopoulos had indicated that a heart attack was a “possible” cause of death.
It added that nobody would know for sure until a post mortem had been conducted.
This created a window of uncertainty in which speculation could flourish.
Vine reported: “Detectives from Memphis police department are investigating the ‘strong possibility that death was a result of an overdose of drugs’.
How the Daily Express reported it 37 years ago [EXPRESS]
Elvis Presley, the King of Rock, died in hospital last night after being taken ill at his home
Brian Vine, a New York-based reporter
"It has been said that he was a heavy user of cocaine for the past year.”
As the news of the King’s death swept the town, crowds began to gather outside the gates of his Graceland mansion. Radio stations scrapped their normal programmes and began playing Presley’s greatest hits on a loop in tribute.
Little by little more details about the circumstances of his death emerged.
“It was his road manager Joe Esposito who found Presley slumped in an upstairs back bedroom of the old colonial style house with its white columns and big gates,” the Daily Express reported.
“The legendary star showed no sign of breathing and there was no apparent heartbeat. The time was 2.30pm.”
It would later turn out however that the singer had been found by his girlfriend after having collapsed while on the toilet.
The King’s funeral was held at Graceland on Thursday, August 18.
Around 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill Cemetery, where he was buried next to his mother.
Speculation has raged ever since over the true cause of Presley’s death, with theories raging from a congenital heart condition or abuse of prescription drugs to a cocaine overdose and even problems associated with chronic constipation.
Elvis Presley, the King of Rock, died in hospital last night after being taken ill at his home
Brian Vine, a New York-based reporter
"It has been said that he was a heavy user of cocaine for the past year.”
As the news of the King’s death swept the town, crowds began to gather outside the gates of his Graceland mansion. Radio stations scrapped their normal programmes and began playing Presley’s greatest hits on a loop in tribute.
Little by little more details about the circumstances of his death emerged.
“It was his road manager Joe Esposito who found Presley slumped in an upstairs back bedroom of the old colonial style house with its white columns and big gates,” the Daily Express reported.
“The legendary star showed no sign of breathing and there was no apparent heartbeat. The time was 2.30pm.”
It would later turn out however that the singer had been found by his girlfriend after having collapsed while on the toilet.
The King’s funeral was held at Graceland on Thursday, August 18.
Around 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill Cemetery, where he was buried next to his mother.
Speculation has raged ever since over the true cause of Presley’s death, with theories raging from a congenital heart condition or abuse of prescription drugs to a cocaine overdose and even problems associated with chronic constipation.
Flowers left for The King after his funeral [GETTY]
But in death, as in life, nothing could halt the Elvis bandwagon.
Within a few days of his expiry, his final single Way Down was topping the charts and over the next few years posthumously released singles by Presley were top ten hits in many markets worldwide.
Graceland remained a place of pilgrimage for his millions of fans and was opened to the public in 1982.
To this day it attracts more than half a million visitors annually, a total that makes it the second most-visited home in the United States after the White House.
It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.
Never has it been more appropriate to say: “The King is dead, long live the King”.
WHAT ELSE HAPPENED IN 1977?
January 3: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak incorporate Apple Computer Inc, the company that goes on to launch the iMac, the iPhone and the iPad.
Today it has a market capitalisation of £375 billion.
The company had been founded on April 1 the previous year as a partnership between Jobs, Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, a colleague of Jobs at Atari.
Fearful of risking what assets he had, however, Wayne sold his stake back to the two Steves two weeks later for $800 (£490).
If he had held on to his share he would now be worth £37.5 billion.
Instead, now 80 and retired, Wayne lives in a mobile home park in Nevada.
Elvis' legacy still lives on today [REX]
March 27: The world’s deadliest ever aviation disaster occurs on Tenerife in the Canary Islands.
After a bomb goes off at the airport on the larger island of Gran Canaria, incoming traffic is diverted to Tenerife’s smaller Los Rodeos airport.
As more and more planes land there, air traffic control is forced to park some on one of the runways.
To make matters worse a dense fog descends. At one point a misunderstanding occurs and a KLM jumbo carrying 248 passengers accelerates down the runway and smashes into a parked Pan Am jumbo carrying 396 passengers.
Everyone on the KLM plane is killed and there are just 61 survivors from the wreckage of the PanAm 747, resulting in a death toll of 583.
May 25: The first Star Wars movie opens in cinemas, and gets such good word-of-mouth response that filmgoers are soon queuing round the block to see it.
So enduring was its appeal that it ran in some cinemas for nine months. It went on to gross £490 million and spawn six sequels.
September 10: The guillotine claims its last victim in France, a Tunisian convicted murderer called Hamida Djandoubi.
By now France was the last western European country to have the death penalty and during the presidential campaign of 1981 the Socialist Party candidate Francois Mitterrand declared his opposition to capital punishment.
Within five months of him taking office it had been abolished.
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