There was a big talk at Candlestick Park that this had got to end. At that San Francisco gig it seemed that this could possibly be the last time, but I never felt 100% certain till we got back to London. John wanted to give up more than the others. He said that he’d had enough—Ringo Starr, Anthology

After a couple hundred live shows over five years—lunchtime shows at The Cavern Club in Liverpool, long nights in Hamburg’s red light district, world tours, three annual tours of America—The Beatles took the stage at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park on this date 50 years ago. It was the nineteenth and last show of their latest American tour, and the four men on stage and a few others knew one other thing about it: it was going to be their final live performance as the Beatles.
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The two men, both of them adults, wanted the boy dead. They wanted him dead. The boy was 14 years old and a visitor from out of town, a city kid from Chicago.

On a visit to see family in the country, in Money, Mississippi, the boy from Chicago went to the local grocery store one day. He bought bubblegum.

He spoke to the woman behind the counter, who was not a lot older than he was, 21. Perhaps he thanked her, perhaps he said something else. Either way, she did not like the contact. She was white and the boy was black.

Her husband later said that the boy had “whistled” at his wife, so he and his half-brother wanted the boy dead. At 2:30 in the morning, with the young woman alongside to identify the boy, they went to the boy’s uncle’s home and found the boy.

What followed was not a lecture from two men to a boy about how a young man should speak with a woman. No. On this date in 1955, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam took Emmett Till with them and the boy never returned. Days later, when the body was found in the Tallahatchie River, it was identifiable only by a ring the boy usually wore. The body was identifiable as human only in the minimal sense after what they had done before throwing Emmett Till in the water. They wanted him dead, you see.
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The Beatles met Elvis Presley at his mansion on Perugia Way in Bel Air on this date in 1965.

The meeting between two of the biggest acts in show business came about after negotiations between Beatles manager Brian Epstein and Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker. When the Beatles came to America in February 1964 to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, Sullivan read a telegram to the band: “Congratulations on your appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and your visit to America. We hope your engagement will be a successful one and your visit pleasant. Give our best to Mr. Sullivan. Sincerely, Elvis & the Colonel.”

It was decided that with Elvis as the older performer (just four years older than John Lennon and Ringo Starr but famous for a decade by 1965), the Beatles would visit him at home while they were performing in Los Angeles instead of bring him to the home that had been rented for them or bring him backstage after they had performed.

Thus, there were no photographers present at 10:00 p.m. that night when the Beatles arrived at Elvis Presley’s mansion, and no tape recorders were turned on. All present say that an informal jam session took place, but no one wrote down what was played. Elvis played bass.

A few photographs exist, taken by fans outside Presley’s mansion gates who possibly did not know what they were witnessing or could not believe it. One is above; you can make out John Lennon walking toward a limo with Elvis and his girlfriend (later wife) Priscilla in the doorway on the left. In another photo, one of Elvis’ neighbors appears to be walking past, oblivious.
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