On this day in 1964, in response to a reported shooting,
officers of the Los Angeles Police Department were
dispatched to the Hacienda Motel, where they found
singer Sam Cooke lying dead on the office floor, shot
three times in the chest by the motel’s manager, Bertha
Franklin.

The authorities ruled Cooke’s death a case of justifiable
homicide, based on the testimony of Ms. Franklin, who
claimed that Cooke had threatened her life after attempting
to rape a young woman with whom he had earlier checked
in.

Even as the lurid details of the case were becoming common
knowledge, some 200,000 fans turned out in the streets of
Los Angeles and Chicago to mourn the passing of Sam
Cooke.

In the years since his death, the circumstances surrounding
Cooke’s shooting have been called into question by his family
and others. Though the truth of what happened on this day in
1964 remains uncertain, Sam Cooke’s place in the history of
popular music is anything but.

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 Manhattan apartment 
building when Mark David Chapman shot him four times at
close range with a .38-caliber revolver.

Mark David Chapman (69).

On November 29, 1981, the actress Natalie Wood, who starred in
such movies as Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story,
drowned in a boating accident near California’s Catalina Island.

Wood started acting at age four and was given a co-starring role
at age eight in Miracle on 34th Street (1947).

Wood’s film credits also include West Side Story (1961), winner
of 10 Oscars, in which she played the lead role of Maria.

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)

In the midst of the Watergate scandal that eventually ended his presidency, President Richard Nixon told a group of newspaper
editors gathered at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, that
he is “not a crook.”

Nixon made the now-famous declaration during a televised
question-and-answer session with Associated Press editors.

Nixon, who appeared “tense” to a New York Times reporter,
was questioned about his role in the Watergate burglary
scandal and efforts to cover up the fact that members of his
re-election committee had funded the break-in.