Who was John F. Kennedy ?

Kennedy was an enormously popular president, both at home and abroad, and his family drew famous comparisons to King Arthur’s court at Camelot. His brother Bobby served as his attorney general, while the youngest Kennedy son,

Edward (Ted), was elected to Jack’s former Senate seat in 1962.

Jackie Kennedy became an international icon of style, beauty and sophistication, though stories of her husband’s numerous marital infidelities (and his personal association with members of organized crime) would later emerge to complicate the Kennedys’ idyllic image.

On November 22, 1963, the president and his wife landed in Dallas; he had spoken in San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth the day before.

From the airfield, the party then traveled in a motorcade to the Dallas Trade Mart,

the site of Jack’s next speaking engagement. Shortly after 12:30 p.m., as the motorcade was passing through downtown Dallas,

shots rang out; Kennedy was struck twice, in the neck and head, and was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at a nearby hospital.

Twenty-four-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, known to have Communist sympathies,

was arrested for the killing but was shot and fatally wounded two days later by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby while being led to jail.

Almost immediately, alternative theories of Kennedy’s assassination emerged–including conspiracies run by the KGB, the Mafia and the U.S. military-industrial complex, among others.

A presidential commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Oswald had acted alone, but speculation and debate over the assassination has persisted.