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The world was horror-struck
on 22 November 1963 when John F Kennedy, the charismatic young president,
became the third U.S. President to have been assassinated. At 12:30pm,
Friday, the President was travelling with his wife, Mrs Jacqueline Bouvier
Kennedy and Texas governor John Connally in a black Lincoln convertible
through the streets of Dallas. While Dallas resident Abraham Zapruder’s
home-movie camera rolled, a hidden assassin shot President Kennedy in
the head even as crowds of cheering, flag-waving people watched on.
The limousine sped
off to Parkland Memorial hospital with the President slumped across the
backseat with a blood-spattered Mrs Kennedy cradling him in her arms.
JFK was pronounced dead 30 minutes later.
By 1:45pm, Dallas police had seized a suspect: Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old
employee of the Texas School Book Depository, from whose sixth-floor window
the shots were said to have been fired. Two days later, on Sunday, November
24, millions of Americans watched on television as Oswald was being transferred
from the Dallas city jail to a county jail. Suddenly, a local night-club
owner with a riminal record named Jack Ruby stepped out of a small crowd
and shot Oswald at point-blank range in the stomach with a .35-calibre
revolver. Oswald died within minutes.
The alleged assassin’s
bizarre, mob-style "silencing" and other murky details of the
assassination (including various interpretations of Zapruder’s film, the
only film record of the event) gave rise, almost instantly, to a host
of theories about who was responsible. (The official explanation, the
Warren report of 1964, did little to assuage the nation’s bewilderment.)
Indeed, JFK’s assassination grew into a kind of national obsession, spawning
numerous conspiracy theories. "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?"
became the question by which a generation of bereft Americans identified
itself.
By the time Lyndon
Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president aboard Air Force
One in Dallas three hours after the shooting, the Kennedy legend had
grown to epic proportions, hiding harsh realities including the nation’s
violent division over civil rights and its increasing entanglement in
Vietnam.
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