With war looming in Europe, Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler appealing for peace - this day in 1938. FDR was worried about German threats to invade a part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudentenland (more)
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Hitler scoffed publicly at FDR’s letter—but soon did exactly what Roosevelt feared: take over the Sudentenland, and in March 1939 all of Czechoslovakia itself. World War II, already underway in Asia, would officially begin in Europe six months later
The Warren Commission report on the assassination of President Kennedy was made public - this day in 1964. It said that a lone gunman, 24-year old Lee Harvey Oswald, was solely responsible for the president's murder (more)
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Chaired (reluctantly) by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Warren Report also said that Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner with ties to the Mafia, also acted alone when he killed Oswald two days after the president's murder
What did Jacqueline Kennedy think of the Warren Report? She never bothered to read it - she had no reason to, she had lived it - and didn't care. It wouldn't change, she always said, the cruel, central fact that her husband and the father of her two children was gone (Here: 1966)
Jacqueline, who had contemplated suicide in the spring of 1964, knew the Warren Report was coming out and planned to cancel her newspaper subscriptions for that week - but forgot to. At her hair salon, she was traumatized by seeing images of the Zapruder film on the cover of LIFE
Jackie was further traumatized when she came face to face with images of her husband's killer - like this Oct 2, 1964 cover of Time. While the term "post-traumatic stress disorder" did not exist in those days, that is what Jackie had - and would have - until her own death in 1994
The 1963-1968 period of Jacqueline Kennedy's life - often overlooked by historians - is the subject of my latest book (also a podcast now airing on Apple, Spotify, etc.). Colorful, dramatic, packed with anecdotes you've probably never heard before amazon.com/Jackie-Her-Tra…
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