Any body born in the 1950s will remembers where they were on the 22 November 1963 51 years ago. I had just turned 12 and was just getting home from my local swimming baths in Dalry Road Edinburgh; they were called swimming baths back then. I had been doing my swimming proficiency certificated training with my School class and I can remember wanting to get home as I had made a card for my mum as It was her 52 birthday. I remember feeling quite shocked, when I saw my mum she was crying. I remember wondering what was wrong and a bit concerned, as any 12 years old would be seeing his mother crying and upset. My mum was watching the evening news and I remember asking her what’s wrong mum, they have killed him she said, killed who mum, The President she said. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated that day while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in an open-top convertible. Jacqueline Kennedy was beside him, along with Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, a motorcade through the streets of downtown Dallas Texas. As their vehicle passed the Texas School Book Depository Building at 12:30 p.m., Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from the sixth floor, fatally wounding President Kennedy and seriously injuring Governor Connally. Kennedy was pronounced dead 30 minutes later at Dallas Parkland Hospital. He was 46. One hour after Kennedy was shot, Oswald killed a policeman who questioned him on the street near his rooming house in Dallas. Thirty minutes later, Oswald was arrested in a movie theater by police responding to reports of a suspect. He was formally arraigned on November 23 for the murders of President Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippit. On November 24, Oswald was on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press with live television cameras rolling gathered to witness his departure. As Oswald came into the room, Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded him with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver. Jack Ruby, originally known as Jacob Rubenstein, operated strip joints and dance halls in Dallas and had minor connections to organized crime. He features prominently in Kennedy-assassination theories, and many believe he killed Oswald to keep him from revealing a larger conspiracy. In his trial, Ruby denied the allegation and pleaded innocent on the grounds that his great grief over Kennedys murder had caused him to suffer psychomotor epilepsy and shoot Oswald unconsciously. The jury found Ruby guilty of murder with malice and sentenced him to die. In October 1966, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed the decision on the grounds of improper admission of testimony and the fact that Ruby could not have received a fair trial in Dallas at the time. In January 1967, while awaiting a new trial, to be held in Wichita Falls, Ruby died of lung cancer in a Dallas hospital. The official Warren Commission report of 1964 concluded that neither Oswald nor Ruby were part of a larger conspiracy, either domestic or international, to assassinate President Kennedy. Despite its seemingly firm conclusions, the report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a preliminary report that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy that may have involved multiple shooters and organized crime. The committees findings, as with those of the Warren Commission, continue to be widely disputed.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 11:44:46 +0000