ON THIS DAY: In 1963, JFK was assassinated
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated while travelling through Dallas, Texas, in an open-top convertible.
First lady Jacqueline Kennedy rarely accompanied her husband on political outings, but she was beside him, along with Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, for a 10-mile motorcade through the streets of downtown Dallas on November 22, 1963.
As their vehicle passed the Texas School Book Depository Building at 12:30 p.m., Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly 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.
Lee Harvey Oswald, born in New Orleans in 1939, joined the U.S. Marines in 1956.
He was discharged in 1959 and nine days later left for the Soviet Union, where he tried unsuccessfully to become a citizen.
He worked in Minsk and married a Soviet woman and in 1962 was allowed to return to the United States with his wife and infant daughter.
In April 1963, Oswald went to New Orleans and founded a branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro-Castro organisation.
In September 1963, he went to Mexico City, where investigators allege that he attempted to secure a visa to travel to Cuba or return to the USSR. In October, he returned to Dallas and took a job at the Texas School Book Depository Building.
Less than an 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 theatre 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 brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters 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.
Ruby, who was immediately detained, claimed that rage at Kennedy’s murder was the motive for his action. Some called him a hero, but he was nonetheless charged with first-degree murder.
Information courtesy of History.com.
