On November 23, 1936, the first issue of the pictorial magazine
Life was published, featuring a cover photo of the Fort Peck
Dam’s spillway by Margaret Bourke-White.

Life actually had its start earlier in the 20th century as a different
kind of magazine: a weekly humor publication, not unlike today’s
The New Yorker in its use of tart cartoons, humorous pieces and
cultural reporting.

When the original Life folded during the Great Depression, the
influential American publisher Henry Luce bought the name and
re-launched the magazine as a picture-based periodical on this
day in 1936.

Henry Robinson Luce (1898 – 1967)

This 2012 photo shows the Fort Peck Dam spillway in
northeast Montana.

  
LBJ is sworn in as the 36th president of the United States
on Air Force One after JFK’s assassination in Dallas.

       
        
Immediately following the shooting of John F. Kennedy, the
motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where
the president was pronounced dead about 30 minutes
after the murder.

President Lyndon B. Johnson was hastily sworn in as the 36th
president two hours and eight minutes later aboard Air Force
One at Dallas Love Field.

Air Force One leaves Dallas.

On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy and first lady
Jacqueline Kennedy flew from Fort Worth, where they had
appeared at a chamber breakfast, to Dallas Love Field, where
they got into a motorcade for a parade through downtown.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States,
was assassinated in 1963 while traveling through Dallas, Texas,
in an open-top convertible.

First lady Jacqueline Kennedy rarely accompanied her husband
on political outings, but she was beside him, along with Texas
Governor John Connally and his wife, for a 10-mile motorcade
through the streets of downtown Dallas on November 22.

As their vehicle passed the Texas School Book Depository
Building at 12:30 p.m., Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired three
shots from the sixth floor, fatally wounding President Kennedy
and seriously injuring Governor Connally.

President John F. Kennedy’s limousine parked at the
emergency room entrance of Parkland Hospital, Dallas,
following the assassination.

News bulletins anchored by Walter Cronkite were aired
between commercial breaks during the broadcast of
soap opera As the World Turns.

Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963)

French physician Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier and
François Laurent, the marquis d’ Arlandes, made the
first untethered hot-air balloon flight, flying 5.5 miles
over Paris in about 25 minutes.

Their cloth balloon was crafted by French paper-making
brothers Jacques-Étienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, inventors of the world’s first successful hot-air balloons.

  The Montgolfier brothers.

On this day in1877, the publication Scientific American
enthuses about Thomas Edison‘s new invention: the
phonograph, a way to record and play back sound.

Calling it a "wonderful invention," the article describes
the machine’s capability: "…whoever has spoken or
whoever may speak into the mouthpiece of the phonograph,
and whose words are recorded by it, has the assurance that
his speech may be reproduced audibly in his own tones long
after he himself has turned to dust.