On April 25, 1950, the Boston Celtics make Chuck Cooper, an
All-American forward from Duquesne University, the first
African American picked in NBA draft. With the selection,
the first pick in the second round, Cooper breaks the NBA’s
color barrier and changes the league for the better.

On December 20, 1957, while spending the Christmas holidays
at Graceland, his newly purchased Tennessee mansion, rock-
and-roll star Elvis Presley received his draft notice for the U.S.
Army.

Graceland was Elvis’s home base.

Muhammad Ali, the reigning world heavyweight boxing champion, entered the combative ring of politics and culture by refusing to
serve in the United States military at the height of the Vietnam
War on this day in 1967.

"I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong," Ali famously said the
year before, the exact quote the source of some dispute, in a
battle that made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court. 

He later wrote, "I refuse to be inducted into the Armed Forces
of the United States because I claim to be exempt as a minister
of the religion of Islam."

On December 20, 1957, while spending the Christmas holidays
at Graceland, his newly purchased Tennessee mansion, rock-
and-roll star Elvis Presley received his draft notice for the United
States Army.

Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977)

SANDY KOZEL

2014

James (Jay) Douglas Muir Leno is 72 today.