So it's 50 years today that he got assassinated. I guess we'll never know who did it.

Last year was the 200th anniversary of the assassination of Spencer Perceval, can't recall much of a fuss being made over that

Not that well known even now.

Or even care.

One thing's for sure, his assassination has made sure that history has been kinder to him than it ever would if he'd remained in power

How do you know that?

Do you think things like Viet Nam would not have happened? He would've taken the blame for that instead of Johnson & Nixon, along with many other acts attributed to them. Look behind the cosy family man presentation and you'll find a philandering mysoginist, unused to being challenged by anyone. There's plenty of detail out there, you just need to look for it.

A tad unfair, as he lived in an era of rank misogyny and whilst he no doubt philandered, in this he joined maybe a third or two thirds (depending which stats you believe) of the world male population.


Being the man basically in charge of the planet, do you see that as a bad thing?

if you're looking for faultless saint-like characters in world leaders, good luck with that.

I quite like this portion of his speech to Rice University on the decision to start the Apollo Lunar project...




"...some of which have not yet been invented..." sort of puts the thing into context, that speech was in 1962.

Both JFK and his brother were very much behind making civil rights a federal issue so he would have come out of that fairly will i think.

Plus he bedded Marilyn Monroe so he has my envy. !!!

No-one ever recalls that a police officer died in the incident too...

....other than perhaps the very real stigma of being Roman Catholic in a country which many believed would never elect a Roman Catholic President. Sure you don't have to look too hard for the salacious details of Kennedy's failings, and there were many. But make no mistake, JFK was a great and courageous man, a WWII combat hero, who forced the American people to confront many of their country's uncomfortable societal inequities and facing down the very real global threat of the Soviet bully. For all of its failings, he personified what the USA at its best could be, youthful, enthusiastic with boundless optimism. His inaugural speech 'Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country' is one of the most inspirational speeches ever.
Yes he was an imperfect human being but given the vacuous leadership we have largely endured in the 50yrs since, he was a great man worthy of remembering.

Was at a talk given by Gore Vidal a few years ago, about the Kennedys, who he knew rather well.

He doesn't seem to have had much time for any politicians - JFK and co included.

As for facing down the "Soviet bully", he also helped to create the Cuban situation. But hey - it was tragic that Cuba was lost to a bunch of Mafiosi and their buddies.

Ian Tomlinson might have remembered?

No, he was only 18 months old at the time and living in a completely different country.

Are you sure?
Perhaps he was a boy soldier hidden behind the [igrassy knoll[/i or cocking that rifle on the 5th(?) floor of that book depositry?
Not sure if it was the 5th. That's from memory, but I bet you googled for Tomlinson's age?

7th February 1962, I knew that implicitly after the news coverage of his unfortunate stumble right in front of that police officer, it reminded me of that other unfortunate stumble made by a chap called David Oluwale right in front of some police officers in Leeds back in the days of me youth, he unfortunately stumbled into the River Aire and they couldn't find him again for ages.

FBI/CIA = Even money.
Prince Phillip 2/1
Sam Giancana 7/1
Lee Harvey Oswald 8/1
Marilyn Monroe 10/1
Jackie Bouvier 14/1
Osama Bin Laden 16/1
Ted Bundy 25/1

Interesting read about Mr Oluwale.
He ended up in your neck of the woods via the 2017 City of Culture.

A mate of mine joined the WY Police around 1978 and his first posting as a probationer was to Millgarth police station in Leeds city centre and the first PC that he was seconded to had a lot of knowledge of the Oluwale case, the stories that we heard from him were that the two officers who were only ever charged with assaults had been hard done by and what went on was common practice with vagrants and undesirables who the police didn't want in the city centre.

Decades later when I saw the first episode of Life on Mars I was very impressed with how accurately they depicted the 1970s and the attitudes of the police towards criminals, the drinking culture (we often used to start our Saturday nights out with a couple of cheap pints in Millgarths own bar), racism and sexism.

And to finish off, the first arrest that my mate ever made on his own was a young woman who he caught spray painting a wall one night during the campaigns against violence against women (Ripper years), he took her back to Millgarth, they did a search on her name on the one computer that they owned - she was only a known member of the Baader-Meinhof gang (Wiki search that one)

They should have lent George Oldfield that computer.
All that card indexing didn't prove very successful.

You're going to get me started now



Lets put it like this - my uncle was the catering/bar manager at that time and I often did the glass collecting skivvy job in the players bar after games in the 1970s, the days when RL players drank beer together for the rest of the night after games - if certain senior police had put as much effort into policing as they did knocking back the hard stuff in the players bar until stupid o'clock the next morning then The Ripper story wouldn't be half as long as it is.

Mind, drinking with the ones in charge of the roads on a Saturday night was useful in other ways too, like them making a couple of calls to find out when each station was having a shift change or where each panda car might be on your route home

We best get back on track before we get a bulling.



Presently on C4 although it'll be 4od for me after the Froch/Groves scrap.

[urlhttp://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/killing-kennedy/[/url

The uncle Albert thread.
During the war ..............

Sounds like innovation, but he did have hundreds of nazi scientists telling him it was going to happen. Their technology was so far ahead of the yanks. People like Dr Wagner and of course Von Braun, who you'll see in mission control the day they landed on the moon.

Operation Paperclip. Look it up, but not on wikipedia. Still, none of them were really nazis of course. (cough cough) For those who remember a BBC documentary on it years ago I think it may have been titled something like "The Paperclip conspiracy" where files were changed form saying some of the thousands of missile, computer and miltary technologists were stamped as Nazis, but on the next interviews, were stamped as being NOT nazis and were sent to the US so the Soviets couldn't get them.


Anyway back to JFK. Everyone remembers where they were when JFK was shot in the head... apart from JFK himself of course. I fan Q.