The Kennedy assassination

The motorcade was running a few minutes late through downtown Dallas on a clear, warm day. The bubble top was off the car because the weather was good and the crowds were large.

The shots were fired at about 12:30 pm as the car turned onto Elm Street. The President was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital and pronounced dead at 1:00 pm. Governor John Connally, in the same car, was badly wounded and survived.

Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office aboard Air Force One at Dallas Love Field at 2:38 pm, with Jacqueline Kennedy standing beside him still wearing the suit she had worn that morning.

The networks dropped their schedules and stayed on the air for four days without commercials — the first time American television had done anything like it. Walter Cronkite's on-air confirmation, taking off his glasses to check the clock, is the version most people carry.

Two days later Lee Harvey Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police headquarters, live, while being transferred. It was the first killing broadcast as it happened to a national audience.

The funeral on 25 November was watched by an estimated audience larger than any previous television event in the United States.

The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren, reported in September 1964 and concluded that Oswald acted alone. Its findings have been argued over ever since, including by a later House select committee that reached a different conclusion about conspiracy while agreeing Oswald fired.

Rewind does not adjudicate that. The commission's own volumes are public and linked below; they are more interesting than most of what has been written about them.