Sunday 6 May 2012

JFK Assassination

Daily Mirror, Daily Sketch, Daily Mail and Daily Express
dated Saturday November 23rd 1963

     

   
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This is the 1st anniversary of this blog so a slight departure from the usual single front page. 
4 front pages that say the same thing – John F Kennedy assassinated, and show the same thing - a picture of Secret Service agent Clint Hill riding the back of the Presidential limo as it accelerated out of Dealey Plaza on its way to Parkland Memorial Hospital
The President of the most powerful nation on Earth gunned down in the street. It was the biggest news story that had happened during my life until then, and would be until 2001 and the destruction of the World Trade Centre. 

 
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On their back page both the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch use the same photograph of Oswald being taken into the Main Street Police Station in downtown Dallas. 


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Was it Wittgenstein or Homer Simpson that said that we could never know the absolute truth about anything? Occam’s razor suggests that the simplest solution to any question is probably the correct one. So who did shoot John F Kennedy from the 5th floor of the Book Depository? Was it the lone loony Lee Harvey Oswald or imported Marseilles drug gang gunmen from behind the grassy knoll? The CIA? The Mafia? Cubans? Lyndon Johnson? Logic tells us that Oswald acted alone, as did Jack Ruby when, ‘for Jackie’s sake’, he shot Oswald. But that’s boring. Conspiracy theory is more fun and makes for better books, TV programmes and films. Sod Wittgenstein, take it from me – Oswald was a patsy. 


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Not the right time to mention that father Joe Kennedy allegedly ‘bought’ his son the Presidency by paying Mafia boss Sam Giancana to get their Union members in West Virginia to vote JFK and swing the election. Nor the time to mention his alleged affairs with film stars (including Marilyn Monroe), White House workers, a reporter, a Mafia girlfriend and even a suspected East German spy. 



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The new President – 55 year-old Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson.
He was hated by the anti-war left wing youth of America for escalating the US involvement in Vietnam. Remember the chant? –
“Hey! Hey! LBJ!
How many kids did you kill today?”

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I didn’t see any TV that Friday evening because I was out with friends at the local flea-pit, so I was unaware of the shooting until the cinema manager super-imposed a note over the film saying ‘Kennedy has been assassinated’.

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Saturday night TV – note the new space and time programme Dr Who. I have always thought that the first episode (An Unearthly Child) was postponed until the following week, but the IMDb claims that it was broadcast on November 23rd 1963. Other web sites concur, including one that says it was also repeated the following Saturday before episode 2. Who knows? Who cares? I do actually. I don’t like not knowing which of my memories are true and which false.

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An anonymous face in the crowd just 27 years after being one of the World’s most recognised. The King who never was – Edward VIII.

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In 1963 the papers would use any excuse to mention the Beatles, who were, I am told, a popular beat combo.

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It had been alleged that in 1962 5 Sheffield policemen had been involved in beating a suspect while in custody, one of them using a rhino hide whip. They said that their senior officers had not only condoned but encouraged the action. 

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The Perishers daily cartoon strip started in 1959 and lasted in one form or another until 2006. In the 1970’s it was made into an animated TV series.

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Jimmy Gauld, whose football career spanned 1948 to 1961, bet on matches that, in collusion with players from one of the teams, he ‘fixed’. 
This trial for attempted bribery cost him £80, but worse was to come.
In 1964 he sold his story to the Sunday People for £7,000, incriminating three Sheffield Wednesday players. The revelations resulted in a criminal trial for fraud and he got four years in prison. 6 co-defendants, all players, also got jail sentences.

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I bought my one and only cine camera from Dixons (other stores are available or have gone bankrupt). The film stock came in a cartridge and had a shooting time of 4 minutes. Afterwards it had to be sent off for processing. I wonder if Zapruder got his from Dixons?

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A speed trap detector that doesn’t let you know there is one there until you have been trapped is fundamentally flawed. I wonder what the Dragons would have said about it?

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‘That Was The Week That Was’ (aka TW3) was a live satirical show, hosted by 24 year-old Cambridge graduate David Frost, known for its combination of satirical sketches, serious interviews, political songs and occasional punch-ups. It took the Saturday night post-10 O-clock News slot on BBC1 and often overran its scheduled 11:10 finish time. It was shown in 1962 and 1963, but using the excuse that it was an election year and the BBC had to be politically unbiased; the show was not renewed in 1964.
They got another pat on the back, this time from the Sunday papers, for their Saturday night tribute to Kennedy.

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There are 5½ pages worth of these small ads in this 32 page Daily Mirror! 

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