Elvis Presley Facts

NASHVILLE SKYLINE: Will Elvis Presley See Revenge Against Media Mogul Rupert ...

(NASHVILLE SKYLINE is a column by CMT/ CMT .com Editorial Director Chet Flippo.)

In case you have missed it, there is a very messy and convoluted media scandal underway in the United Kingdom involving Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch. What it essentially boils down to is this: Murdoch's News of the World tabloid -- which has been the best-selling tabloid paper in the English-speaking world -- has hired detectives over the years to hack into the cell phones of thousands of politicians, celebrities and other prominent people.

That practice turned deadly toxic with the newspaper turning to hacking into the cell phones of ordinary citizens, including a missing 13-year-old girl (who was murdered), the families of London train bombings terrorism victims and families of slain soldiers in Iraq.

The scandal has forced Murdoch to shut down the News of the World . It has also dragged British prime minister David Cameron, his government and the London police into the morass. It developed that the News of the World was bribing members of the police. The scandal could bring down the government. There is widespread speculation in the UK that this could break up Murdoch's empire there, which includes the London Times , the Sunday Times , the Sun and a 39 percent interest in pay TV conglomerate BSkyB, which Murdoch had been attempting to buy outright until this hacking scandal finally forced him to back away. His holdings in the U.S. include the New York Post , the Fox Network, Fox News on cable TV and the Wall Street Journal . You will recall that Murdoch is also the man who paid $580 million for MySpace in 2005. He sold MySpace a few weeks ago in June for $30 million.

I first became aware of Murdoch and his creeping media tentacles in the early 1970s when I lived in Austin and regularly read the newspapers from Texas' leading and more influential -- or most interesting -- newspapers. They included the San Antonio News and the San Antonio Express , which were suddenly acquired by the Australian press impresario Rupert Murdoch in 1973 as his launching pad into American journalism.

He later combined both newspapers as the San Antonio Express-News , but early on, he instructed the News staff to turn the paper into a "screamer." And the paper soon did so. With a vengeance.

Elvis Presley-some Strange Facts | lifestylemagazine.biz

2. On 21 December 1970, Presley met President Nixon at the White House. Presley had initiated the meeting with a six-page letter to the President, in which he had spelt out his desire to be made a “Federal Agent-at-Large” in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. During his meeting with Nixon, Presley denounced The Beatles as being ‘un-American’ for their open drug-taking and anti-Vietnam politics. For his part, Nixon reminded Presley of his need to “retain credibility”. Nevertheless, he is said to have given Presley a ‘Special Agent’ badge.

11. Some of Elvis’s bejewelled jumpsuits weighed more than two stone.

12. When Elvis discovered that his wife, Priscilla, had been having an affair with Mike Stone – a karate instructor and mutual friend of the couple – he flew into a rage. The biographer Peter Guralnick claims that Elvis was so angry, he said: “there’s too much pain in me ¿ Mike Stone [must] die.” But when his body-guard, Red West, came back to his boss with a price for Stone’s contract killing, the King’s mood had softened. “Aw hell,” he said. “Let’s just leave it for now. Maybe it’s a bit heavy.”

13. Elvis won three Grammy Awards – for his gospel recordings.

14. He only performed five concerts outside the United States – all in Canada in 1957. At the time of his death, he was planning a European tour. He only set foot on British soil once, when the plane taking him back to the United States from Germany stopped to refuel at Glasgow Prestwick airport. The singer enjoyed a two-hour stop over before re-boarding the military plane.

15. The last film Elvis saw at the cinema was The Spy Who Loved Me. The day before he died, though, he had tried to obtain a print of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, to show his daughter, Lisa Marie.

16. Sometime in the early 1960s, Elvis adopted a chimpanzee called Scatter. Scatter had previously belonged to a Memphis children’s entertainer, and was trained to perform. He also had a penchant for looking up women’s skirts. Elvis found this trait amusing. A well-known wheeze was to gather his female friends together, and then let Scatter wreak havoc among them.

17. Even before the obese later years, Presley was a prodigious eater. In his 20s, he told Country Song Roundup Magazine that he could demolish eight deluxe cheese burgers, two bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches and three milkshakes in a single sitting.