15/11/2025
THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY
On November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. CST, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza. A lesser-known detail is that just minutes before, at 12:15 p.m., a local seamstress named Abraham Zapruder, standing on a concrete pedestal, decided to film the motorcade with his 8mm Bell & Howell camera, capturing the infamous 26-second footage that became critical evidence. Zapruder nearly didn’t bring his camera, only retrieving it from his office at 11:00 a.m. after a colleague’s urging, a decision noted in his testimony on February 13, 1964, to the Warren Commission. Another obscure fact: a street musician, Robert Edwards, was playing a guitar near the Texas School Book Depository at 12:29 p.m. and reported hearing a loud noise he initially thought was a car backfiring, a detail recorded in a Dallas police report on November 23, 1963, but overlooked in major accounts, as it provided an early clue to the timing of the shots.
On June 6, 1944, at 6:30 a.m. local time, Allied forces launched the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, marking the largest amphibious assault in history. Few know that the operation nearly faltered due to a navigational error by a British landing craft, LCA 911, which at 5:45 a.m. veered off course toward a German minefield near Juno Beach, only to be redirected by a nearby destroyer at 5:50 a.m., as documented in naval logs declassified on September 1, 1974. Another overlooked detail: a French Resistance member, Marie-Louise Giraud, transmitted a critical radio message at 4:00 a.m. from a hidden transmitter in Caen, confirming German troop movements, which reached Allied commanders by 5:00 a.m. Her contribution, vital to adjusting the invasion plan, was unacknowledged until a French historian uncovered her coded logs on March 10, 1985, highlighting the unsung role of local resistors in the operation’s success.
