22 November: The Assassination of John F Kennedy

On this date in 1963 President John F. Kennedy was killed by a sniper while riding in an open car in Dallas, Texas. Here are 10 things you might not know about the Kennedy assassination.

1. Why was JFK in Dallas in the first place? He'd gone there to sort out a rift between members of his party. Jacqueline Kennedy rarely travelled with her husband on political trips but decided to go with him on this one.
2. It wasn't the first time someone had attempted to assassinate Kennedy. There were six assassination plots in his lifetime including one in which a retired postman called Richard Paul Pavlick filled his car with dynamite and was going to ram it into Kennedy's – a suicide bombing. However, when Pavlick saw that Kennedy had his family in the car with him, he changed his mind. Before he could try again he was arrested and put in a mental institution.
3. Kennedy's last words were ironic. As his car entered Dealey Plaza, one of the other passengers, Nellie Connally, the First Lady of Texas, turned to the President and commented, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you," to which President Kennedy replied, "No, you certainly can't."
4. The assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a former marine. He had been living in Russia for three years before the assassination, and had a Russian wife. He stated to US embassy officials in Moscow that he was a Marxist. He applied to return to the USA, and the US government lent him the money to pay for his travel.
5. The murder weapon was a 6.5 mm Italian carbine rifle that Oswald had bought for $19.95. It is alleged he fired three shots at Kennedy with a mail-order rifle from an open window on the sixth floor of The Texas Book Depository Company. Immediately afterwards, he hid the gun, bought a soft drink from a vending machine, left the building and went into a cinema, where he was arrested. The film that was on was called War Is Hell!.
6. It was the second shot which killed Kennedy. The first shot entered his upper back, slightly damaged a spinal vertebra and the top of his right lung. The bullet exited his throat just below his larynx. The doctor who treated him said later that he could have survived that, and it was the second shot to the back of his head that was fatal. Dr. Kenneth Salyer went on to say that Kennedy had been wearing a back brace because of previous severe back problems which restricted his movement. Had he not been wearing it, he might have slumped forward when the first shot hit and the second shot would then have missed him.
7. A spectator was slightly injured bullet or bullet fragment with no copper casing struck the nearby Main Street south curb. James Tague felt something sting his cheek and a nearby policeman pointed out his cheek was bleeding. The curb was removed for analysis and the metallic residue found on it was consistent with that of the lead core in Oswald's ammunition.
8. The President was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m., CST. 99 minutes later, Lyndon B. Johnson took the oath of office aboard Air Force One. Jacqueline Kennedy was present, still wearing the Pink suit stained with her husband's Blood. She'd refused to change out of it, telling Lady Bird Johnson, "I want them to see what they have done to Jack." The suit, which has never been cleaned, is in the National Archives. The Kennedy family have specified that it should not go on public display before 2103.
9. The limousine Kennedy was riding in was a 1961 Lincoln Continental four-door convertible code-named the X-100. After it was examined for evidence the car was overhauled, cleaned and returned to service at the White House. It continued to carry Presidents until early 1977. It is now on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The Texas School Book Depository's sixth floor, is now a museum dedicated to JFK's assassination.
10. We can't leave this topic without mentioning conspiracy theories and curses. Conspiracy theories have abounded ever since. The fact that several official enquiries into the incident came up with differing theories as to whether Oswald acted alone didn't help. Lyndon Johnson said in an interview with Walter Cronkite in 1969 that he did not discount the possibility Kennedy's death was the work of a foreign power: "I can't honestly say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections," he said. Johnson requested the comment be removed from the interview for national security reasons and it only aired after his death. In the film JFK, directed by Oliver Stone, a closing scene suggests that Americans cannot trust official public conclusions when those conclusions have been made in secret. Later in the year, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, known as the JFK Records Act, which would make the records public by October 2017 unless the President decided they should remain classified. The Kennedy family suffered a string of misfortunes around that time, including the later assassination of his brother Bobby. Members of the family suffered life changing injuries, illnesses and premature deaths, leading to speculation that the family was cursed. There's also The Curse of Tippecanoe (also known as Tecumseh's Curse). Proponents claim there is a pattern in which US Presidents elected in years ending in zero will die in office. The presidents elected in 1840, 1860, 1880, 1900, 1920, 1940 and 1960 all died in office. Those elected in 1980 and 2000 survived their terms but both were the victims of assassination attempts.

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