20 Unlikely Historical Figures Who Actually Met: From Elvis to Gandhi

Key facts

• Elvis Presley met Richard Nixon at the White House on December 21, 1970, offering to become a federal narcotics agent.
• The Beatles met Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) on February 18, 1964, in a Miami Beach gym.
• The Beatles met Elvis Presley on August 27, 1965, in Bel Air; no photographs were taken.
• Salvador Dalí met Sigmund Freud on July 19, 1938, in London, sketching his portrait.
• Mahatma Gandhi met Charlie Chaplin on September 22, 1931, in London's East End.
• Mark Twain met Helen Keller in the winter of 1894–95 and later funded her college education.
• Winston Churchill was introduced by Mark Twain on December 12, 1900, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.
• Nikola Tesla met Swami Vivekananda in early 1896 in New York, discussing energy and Vedanta.
• Groucho Marx dined with T.S. Eliot in June 1964 in London; each wanted to discuss the other's work.
• Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle's friendship ended after a fraudulent séance in June 1922.
• Geronimo met Theodore Roosevelt on March 4, 1905, asking to return to Arizona; Roosevelt refused.
• Fidel Castro met Malcolm X on September 19, 1960, at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem.
• Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir met Che Guevara in early 1960 at Cuba's National Bank.
• Marilyn Monroe met Queen Elizabeth II on October 29, 1956, at the Empire Theatre in London.
• Michael Jackson received a Presidential Public Safety Communication Award from Ronald Reagan on May 14, 1984.
• William S. Burroughs met David Bowie in November 1973 in London for a Rolling Stone interview.
• Ernest Hemingway met Marlene Dietrich in 1934 aboard the Île de France; they corresponded for decades.
• P.T. Barnum's Charles Stratton (General Tom Thumb) met Queen Victoria in March 1844 at Buckingham Palace.
• Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show visited Pope Leo XIII at the Vatican on March 3, 1890.
• Roald Dahl, as a British spy, spent weekends at Hyde Park with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in 1942.