"Well, isn't this a Thriller," joked President Ronald Reagan when he met Michael Jackson on May 14, 1984, at the White House. Reagan was honoring Jackson for allowing the administration to use "Beat It" in anti-drunk driving ads.
CREDIT: Photograph by Rich Lipski/AFP/Getty Images.
"The King is at the gate," a White House staffer announced on Dec. 21, 1970. After Elvis Presley penned a six-page letter to President Richard Nixon asking, among other things, to be appointed a "federal agent at large" in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the pop star showed up to the White House unannounced. Presley, 35 years old at the time, was wearing a dark cape and jewelry.
Photograph by National Archives, from Getty Images.
When President Warren Harding met Albert Einstein in April 1921, he admitted that he didn't understand the theory of relativity. The New York Times' front-page headline: "Einstein Idea Puzzles Harding, He Admits."
Photograph of Einstein by Arthur Sasse/AFP/Getty Images. Photograph of Harding courtesy the National Archives/Newsmakers, from Getty Images.
In August 1924, Coolidge invited Thomas Edison, tire magnate Harvey Firestone, and Henry Ford to his estate in Plymouth, Vt. Coolidge gave Ford a 4-gallon maple-sap bucket.
Coolidge photograph (left) is in the public domain. Edison/Firestone/Ford photograph (right) by AFP/Getty Images.
At the 1972 Republican National Convention, famed entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. embraced a surprised Richard Nixon. Nixon responded by inviting Davis back to the White House for "a gala entertainment honoring the POWs." This photo is from a 1973 meeting the two had in the White House.
Photograph by National Archive/Newsmakers.
When first lady Rosalynn Carter met serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the "Killer Clown," on May 6, 1978, she signed a photograph that the two took together: "To John Gacy," she wrote. "Best wishes, Rosalynn Carter." The two met because of Gacy's work for Chicago's annual Polish Constitution Day Parade. In the picture, Gacy is wearing an "S" pin, a symbol for special clearance from the Secret Service. Between 1972 and '78, Gacy raped and murdered 33 young men. He was arrested in late 1978.
Photograph from the White House.
President Obama awarded Paul McCartney the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song on June 1, 2010. In return, McCartney said he was grateful for the Library of Congress, and noted, "After the last eight years, it's great to have a president who knows what a library is." The British pop star spent an evening serenading the first family. At one point, the entire family joined McCartney onstage and sang along to "Hey Jude."
Photograph by Yuri Gripas/AFP/Getty Images.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah joined President Bush at his Crawford ranch on April 25, 2005. Before retiring to discuss oil prices, Israel and Palestine, the war on terror, and efforts to spread democracy in the Middle East, the two kissed and clasped hands for the press (a display that spooked some American viewers, despite the routine nature of the gesture in the Arab world).
Photograph by Rod Aydelotte-Pool/Getty Images.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt saw Winston Churchill naked in 1941. According to one version of the story, Roosevelt and Churchill were talking as the British prime minister bathed in a White House tub. Churchill accidentally dropped his towel when rising from the water. But Churchill, always the diplomat, put a positive spin on the situation: "As you can see, Mr. President, I have nothing to conceal from you," he said. (In the other version of the story, Churchill was pacing around his room naked when Roosevelt came in.) Here, the two are at the Yalta summit in 1945.
Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives/Wikimedia Commons.
Mutual admiration and respect warmed the White House—somewhat unexpectedly—when Irish pacifist and rock idol Bono visited George W. Bush at home on March 14, 2002. Topics covered included debt relief, world trade, AIDS, malaria … and U2's concert schedule. For his part, Bono was happy to find himself in a position to make an impact: "It is much easier and hipper for me to be on the barricades with a handkerchief over my nose—it looks better on the résumé of a rock-n-roll star. But I can do better by just getting into the White House and talking to a man who I believe listens, wants to listen, to these subjects," he said.
