To inhabit the King, Russell didn’t just rely on the iconic jumpsuits; he underwent a rigorous process to capture Presley’s essence only two years after the singer’s death. Russell spent months studying Elvis’s speaking patterns and stage movements, though his singing was dubbed by country artist Ronnie McDowell. Legendary costume designer Miller Drake painstakingly recreated Elvis’s stage wear, while Russell gained weight and used prosthetics to mirror the different eras of Elvis’s life.

The Carpenter-Russell duo birthed one of cinema’s most productive partnerships. Carpenter, coming off the success of Halloween, brought a moody, cinematic feel to the standard TV biopic. Russell’s father, Bing Russell, actually played Vernon Presley (Elvis’s father) in the 1979 production, adding a layer of real-world family dynamic to the performance. In a strange twist of fate, Russell’s film debut as a child was in the 1963 film It Happened at the World’s Fair, where he famously kicked the real Elvis Presley in the shin. Despite its near three-hour runtime, the film was shot in just 30 days.

Elvis was a massive ratings success, even beating Gone with the Wind and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in the Nielsens on its premiere night. It earned Russell an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor. The film is widely considered one of the best Elvis portrayals ever put to screen, and it helped transform Kurt Russell’s image from a Disney child actor into a serious dramatic performer. It laid the groundwork for his iconic collaborations with John Carpenter, including Escape from New York (1981) and The Thing (1982).

In the late 1960s, Clapton was one of Harrison’s best friends and became deeply enamored with Boyd. In 1970, he professed his love to her directly, but although her relationship with Harrison was becoming strained, she chose to remain with the Beatle. Clapton invited Boyd to an apartment in South Kensington, claiming he had a new song for her to hear. When she arrived, he played her the recording of “Layla” two or three times, watching her face intently the whole time. Boyd reportedly thought, “God, everyone’s going to know it’s about me.”

Among the documents that later came to light is a love letter Clapton wrote to Boyd in 1970, when she was still married to Harrison. Signed mysteriously only “E,” Boyd initially thought it was from a “weird fan” and even showed it to Harrison. Boyd’s rejection of Clapton inspired him to write “Layla” and other love songs for Derek and the Dominos’ classic album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Clapton also descended into heroin addiction during this period.

By the early 1970s, the Harrison–Boyd marriage was falling apart. Both had affairs, and hard drugs and alcohol were increasingly prevalent in their lives. They agreed to split in 1974 and divorced three years later in 1977. After Clapton cleaned up from heroin addiction, he and Boyd began a romance around 1974, with Harrison’s blessing. Within weeks of her divorce from George being finalized, Pattie began a formal relationship with Clapton. That same period saw Clapton write his classic 1977 love song “Wonderful Tonight” about Pattie, composed while she was getting ready to attend Paul and Linda McCartney’s annual Buddy Holly party.

On March 27, 1979, Clapton and Boyd were married at Temple Bethel in Tucson, Arizona, the day before Clapton was scheduled to launch a U.S. tour. Only 40 guests attended the ceremony. George Harrison, remarkably, gave his blessing — his reaction to the news being the now-famous line: “I’d rather she was with him than some dope.” Harrison even lovingly referred to himself as their “husband-in-law” at their wedding reception.

Their relationship was turbulent from the start, with Clapton’s spiraling alcoholism creating serious issues throughout its duration, and eventually pulling Boyd into a period of alcohol dependency as well.  The marriage ended in 1989.

Boyd later reflected that she suspected Clapton’s pursuit of her “had more to do” with the competitive aspect of his friendship with Harrison, believing that “Eric just wanted what George had.” Despite everything, Rolling Stone referred to Boyd as a “legendary rock muse,” and the Boyd–Clapton–Harrison love triangle has been described as “one of the most mythical romantic entanglements in rock ‘n’ roll history.”

The alcohol in the standard thermometer dropped so low it fell off the scale. The weather observer, Gordon Toole, had to scratch a mark on the glass with a file so the instrument could be sent to a lab in Toronto for precise calibration.

Because the air was so dense and still, sounds carried over incredible distances. People at the Snag airport could clearly hear dogs barking in a village over 6 kilometers (nearly 4 miles) away. Exhaled breath didn’t just puff into a cloud; it supposedly made a “hissing” or “tinkling” sound as it froze instantly and fell to the ground as a fine white powder. People walking outside left “human contrails,” long streaks of frozen breath that would hang in the air for several minutes before dissipating.

The weather station at Snag operated from 1943 to 1966, and the record has never been broken. The name “Snag” itself comes from the Klondike gold rush era, when boats navigating the silty waters nearby would occasionally be punctured by submerged tree trunks.

M’Hali was born around 1865 in what is now Tanzania. As a young child, he was captured during a slave raid and sold in a market in Tabora. In 1871, the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley “purchased” him (though Stanley later framed this as “freeing” him). Stanley gave the boy the name Kalulu, which means “young antelope” in the Swahili language, because of his perceived speed and grace.

Stanley grew deeply attached to Kalulu, though the relationship was inherently one of unequal power. Stanley took the boy back to Europe and America, treating him as a protégé, a valet, and a living symbol of his “civilizing” missions. Kalulu accompanied Stanley to London, New York, and Paris. He sat for professional portraits in expensive Victorian suits and attended prestigious dinners.

Stanley even wrote a fictionalized adventure book titled My Kalulu, Prince, King and Slave: A Story of Central Africa (1873), which turned the boy into a household name in England. For a brief period, Stanley enrolled Kalulu in a school in Wandsworth, London, hoping he would eventually return to Africa as a colonial intermediary.

In 1874, Kalulu joined Stanley on the Trans-Africa Expedition, a massive and brutal journey to map the Congo River.

On March 28, 1877, tragedy struck at the Livingstone Falls. Kalulu was in one of the canoes that was swept over a massive waterfall. He and five other crew members drowned. Stanley was devastated by the loss and renamed that specific stretch of water Kalulu Falls in his honor.

Historians view Kalulu’s life through a more critical lens today. While Stanley described their bond as one of father and son, modern analysis highlights the colonial exploitation at play. Kalulu was a child who was uprooted from his culture, renamed, and used as a prop for Stanley’s public image, only to die in his early teens serving the very man who “owned” him.