This Day in History – June 5, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy
was assassinated in the Ambassador Hotel by 24-year-old
Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. He was shot in the head and died
early the next morning.
Kennedy delivered remarks to a crowd in the Ambassador
Hotel moments before the assassination.
Robert F. Kennedy’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery.
Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was
fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-
story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation
workers’ strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet
struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was
pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He
was 39 years old.
Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)
MIKE GRACIA
Film director, writer, producer, and actor Quentin Tarantino
is 60 years old today.
Tarantino’s work has been subject to controversy and
has garnered a cult following, as well as critical and
commercial success. He has received two Academy
Awards and four Golden Globes.
1994
John Lennon, a former member of the Beatles, the rock group
that transformed popular music in the 1960s, was shot and
killed by an obsessed fan in New York City.
The 40-year-old artist was entering his luxury Manhattan
apartment building when Mark David Chapman shot him
four times at close range with a .38-caliber revolver. Lennon,
bleeding profusely, died on the way to the hospital.
Chapman had received an autograph from Lennon earlier in
the day and voluntarily remained at the scene of the shooting
until he was arrested by police.
For a week, hundreds of bereaved fans kept a vigil outside the
Dakota–Lennon’s apartment building–and demonstrations of
mourning were held around the world.
Three days after his assassination in Dallas, Texas, John F. Kennedy
was laid to rest with full military honors at Arlington National
Cemetery in Virginia.
Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was shot to death
while riding in an open-car motorcade with his wife and Texas
Governor John Connally through the streets of downtown Dallas.
Ex-Marine and communist sympathizer Lee Harvey Oswald was the alleged assassin. Kennedy was rushed to Dallas’ Parkland Hospital, where he was pronounced dead 30 minutes later. He was 46.
Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who was three cars behind
President Kennedy in the motorcade, was sworn in as the 36th
president of the United States less than two hours later. He took
the presidential oath of office aboard Air Force One as it sat on
the runway at Dallas Love Field airport. The swearing in was
witnessed by some 30 people, including Jacqueline Kennedy,
who was still wearing clothes stained with her husband’s blood.
Seven minutes later, the presidential jet took off for Washington.
