On June 26, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech that electrified a crowd gathered in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. As he paid tribute to the spirit of Berliners and to their quest for freedom, the crowd roared with approval upon hearing the the President’s dramatic pronouncement, “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner).
President Kennedy used this handwritten note card while delivering his speech. On it, he phonetically spelled German phrases from his speech, including “Ish bin ein Bearleener.” Read More
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Garry Winogrand took this iconic photograph of John F. Kennedy during his acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Until recently, it was the only Winogrand photograph from the convention that had previously been published. The New York Times brings us a selection of newly-released photos by Winogrand from that historic event and is asking its readers to help identify the people in them.
What is it we have to sell them? We hope we have to sell them prosperity, but for the average guy the prosperity is nil. He’s not unprosperous but he’s not very prosperous; he’s not going to make out well off. And the people who really are well off hate our guts.
Things I used to be: a John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory buff. (Pause for facepalms.) I guess it helped that I once interned at a publishing house that released book after book about what “experts” really thought happened on November 22, 1963.
The grassy knoll. Cubans. Communists. The Zapruder Film. The book depository. Dealey Plaza. The Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.
Nancy Pelosi and President Kennedy at his inauguration ball 50 years ago today. Adorable.
Whoa!!!!!!!
Woah, indeed!
In which we learn that Katie Bakes spells “whoa” the traditional way and Vanity Fair writes it like a Millennial.
And holy fuck, Nancy Pelosi with JFK!
Woah, like whoa.
Jack Kennedy attended Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut. It’s now Choate-Rosemary Hall. The headmaster in Kennedy’s time was George St. John. The first page of his notebook contains a portion of an essay by Dean Lebaron Briggs who was St. John’s dean at Harvard. Let me read the last lines of that essay which St. John used for his chapel sermons:
As has often been said, the youth who loves his Alma Mater will always ask not ‘What can she do for me?’ but ‘What can I do for her.’
I also have a letter to the school written twenty five years ago complaining to the school that Kennedy had ‘plagiarized’ the headmaster’s ‘Ask Not’ phrase — an absurd complaint I think. Students are supposed to remember what their teachers tell them.
Today, Google commemorates the first — and only — inaugural address delivered by John F. Kennedy, exactly 50 years ago, on January 20, 1961.
He would be felled by an assassin’s bullets less than three years later.
A new book compiles letters of condolence written to Jackie Kennedy after her husband, John, was assassinated. The letters come from priests and prisoners, widows and schoolchildren. Above, a missive, replete with typos, from Lisa Blumberg of Montvale Montclair, New Jersey.
(Thanks to thecakeisaliar for the correction. -ed.)
And this is why I like going to thrift stores: the folks at Destructo Deviations stumbled upon a selection of rarely-seen shots of JFK and other “archival photos from CBS featuring design manager Lou Dorfsman” (who “branded CBS and designed the eye” logo).
John Williams
Prologue
JFK (1991)
This selection, from John Williams’s stirring score to Oliver Stone’s controversial film, is dedicated to the memory of Senator Ted Kennedy.
A nation’s heartbreak.
Lyndon Johnson being sworn in as the nation’s 36th President aboard Air Force One, hours after JFK’s assassination. To his right is his wife, Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Johnson, and Jackie Kennedy to his left. Below, a rarely-seen photo from immediately after the somber ceremony.
JFK trying to calm down his hotheaded Vice President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who would assume the Presidency upon Kennedy’s assassination.
In the motorcade heading toward Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, TX, 22 November 1963.
It was 45 years ago today that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr. and Jacqueline Kennedy landed at Love Field in Dallas, TX, not knowing the fate awaiting our nation’s 35th President at the hands of a lone assassin.
