NBC aired Elvis, a one-hour TV special starring Elvis Presley and his band on this date in 1968. In subsequent years, the show came to be known as Elvis’ 1968 Comeback Special, and it was the biggest television hit in 1968.

Elvis, clad in a black leather jumpsuit, made the world notice something: that it missed having an Elvis Presley who performed live. For part of the show, Presley and his band performed in front of a small audience, which was seated around the stage, in NBC’s Burbank television studio in June 1968. It was his first live performance since 1961.

The rest of the show was bigger: choreographed with dancers and set changes, but the intimate show, with Elvis informally joking with the audience and band, is what is remembered.
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“To be a king is to inherit old ideas and genealogy. I don’t want to descend from anyone.”—Napoleon Bonaparte

On this date in 1804, Napoleon was crowned (or crowned himself) Emperor Napoleon 1 of France, because he did not want to be merely king.

The crown was one that had been designed for him, as the crown worn by the King of France was destroyed during the French Revolution. As Pope Pius VII brought it forward, he took the crown from the pope’s hands and placed it on his head himself, in order to forestall any potential papal claim over his throne. In November, French voters had approved Napoleon’s new constitution, which named him emperor, by a 99.93% to 0.07% margin.

Napoleon then crowned his wife, Joséphine, empress.
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The Great Train Robbery, a film directed by Edwin S. Porter for Edison Studios, was first shown at Huber’s Museum in New York City in 1903 on this date. It is the first Western, the first action movie, the first fictional film to use on-location shooting. Made on a budget of about $150, it earned that back and more for Edison, and it rapidly became an international success: the first action movie blockbuster.

Legend has it that at the last sequence, a frame of which is seen at top, in which actor Justus Barnes takes aim at the camera and fires point blank, audience members dove for cover. Nothing that “real” had yet been seen on screen, and audiences had no training in how to watch a film. As legends go, it makes its point, but it most likely never happened: no contemporary accounts describe audiences in panic.
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