January 20, 1961
John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as the thirty-fifth President of the United States.
November 22, 1963
7.23am: Oswald goes to work
Lee Harvey Oswald, an employee at the Texas book depository building in Dallas, goes to work with Buell Wesley Frazier, a young worker there. Frazier asks about the long, paper-wrapped package in Oswald’s arms, to which Oswald says: “Oh, just some curtains.”
11.30am: Arrival in Dallas
Air Force One lands at Love Field in Dallas and the disembarking President Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy are met by the press and a crowd of Texans.
11.45am: The motorcade
The Kennedys join Texas governor John Connally, his wife, Nellie, in an open-air limousine. Vice-president Lyndon Johnson and his wife ride in another limo nearby.
12:15: Oswald Book depository
Oswald seen on the second floor cafeteria.
12:15: Witness
Arnold Rowland sees a gun at the 6th floor window.
12.29pm: Dealey plaza
As the limo enters Dealey Plaza, Nellie Connally turned to the president and remarked, “Mr President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.”
The motorcade was scheduled to enter Dealey Plaza at 12:10 p.m.
12.30pm: Assassination 1.A bullet strikes the president in the back while he waves, 2.Followed by a second shot to the back of his head. 3.Another shot severely wounds the governor.
A man in the crowd, Abraham Zapruder, happens to film the sequence on his home-movie camera.
12:31 pm
Hearing what he initially thought to be a firecracker, secret service agent Clinton Hill sees the president recoil from the first shot. He runs from the follow-up car, but when he reaches the limousine the second shot hits the president, and the agent leaps aboard too late.
12:31.30pm: Oswald Book depository
Patrolman Marrion Baker confronts Oswald in the depository cafeteria or ground floor, but the building superintendent vouches for him.
12.31pm: Reaction, and Oswald departs
Oswald walks seven blocks, boards a city bus, and eventually gets into a cab at the bus depot.
1pm: Parkland hospital
Doctors are unable to save the president.
One says: ‘We never had any hope of saving his life.’
A Catholic priest administered last rites and the first lady reportedly held her husband’s hand and placed one of her rings onto his finger.
1pm: Oswald
Oswald walks back to his rooming house, changes his jacket there for one more lightly coloured, and heads back into the street.
1.06 – 1:10 pm: Officer Tippit killed
Police officer JD Tippit pulls up to a person in his car, after having heard of a suspect matching his description.
After briefly speaking through an open window, Tippit stepped out of his car and was shot three times in the chest and once in the temple.
Twelve people witnessed a man fleeing the scene, and six later identified Oswald in police line-ups.
Officer Tippit killed
Here is the description:
“Attention, all squads, the suspect is believed to be a white male, age 30, 5 fee 10 inches, slender build, 165 pounds, armed with what is thought to be a 30-30 rifle. No further description or information at this time.”
1.22pm: On the sixth floor
Police find a rifle behind a stack of books in the room from which the assassin fired.
There were reports of three different guns being found:
ØA Mauser
ØA Maccano
ØA British Enfield
1.30pm: Texas Theatre
Oswald goes into the Texas Theatre without paying, and takes a seat for the movie War is Hell. Police receive a tip from the area about a suspicious man matching their description for Tippit’s murderer.
1.30pm: Lyndon Johnson
Arrives at Airforce One, he won’t leave without Jacqui Kennedy and she won’t leave without her husband.
1.45pm: Oswald arrested
Fifteen police officers surround the movie theatre, and four officers are needed to subdue Oswald inside. At 1.51pm police report him in custody.
They find a gun and two forms of ID.
ØAlex James Hidell
ØLee Harvey Oswald
2pm: Evidence
Dallas police’s paraffin tests confirm that Oswald recently fired a gun. Oswald’s wife later confirms that the rifle found in the depository belongs to her husband.
2pm: Kennedy body
Body removed and taken to Airforce one.
2.30pm: Questioning
Interrogated for almost 12 hours, Oswald denies throughout that he had anything to do with either murder. Confronted with photos of himself holding a rifle and pistol, Oswald “sneered, saying that they were fake photographs … [taken] by the police, that they had superimposed upon the photographs a rifle and revolver.” He eventually stops answering all questions.
Unknown Time:
A nearly whole bullet was found on Governor Connally’s stretcher at Parkland Hospital after the assassination.
After his arrival at the hospital the Governor was brought into trauma room No. 2 on a stretcher, removed from the room on that stretcher a short time later, and taken on an elevator to the second-floor operating room.
On the second floor he was transferred from the stretcher to an operating table which was then moved into the operating room, and a hospital attendant wheeled the empty stretcher into an elevator.
Shortly afterward, Darrell C. Tomlinson, the hospital’s senior engineer, removed this stretcher from the elevator and placed it in the corridor on the ground floor, alongside another stretcher wholly unconnected with the care of Governor Connally.
A few minutes later, he bumped one of the stretchers against the wall and a bullet rolled out.