“The Umbrella Man” is a short documentary made by US film director Errol Morris focussing on an unidentified man who was at the scene of the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963, who is so named because he was carrying an umbrella.

This detail has piqued the interest of those studying the shooting, given the weather was fine on the day, prompting many to ask why the man was carrying an umbrella in the first place.

Footage of Kennedy’s motorcade, filmed by Abraham Zapruder, and photos taken by others, show the man opening and closing the umbrella seconds before the president was shot, leading to speculation he had some sort of involvement in the killing.

If it is ever emphatically proven there was more to the assassination of Kennedy – that is, there was a conspiracy – rather than a solitary guy with a cheap rifle whose aim was good, I doubt then we’d ever fully understand what happened, given the number people who have since been found to be potentially complicit.

LIFE Magazine has recently released a selection of unpublished photos of John F. Kennedy, who elected to the US Presidency 50 years ago last month.

James Tague is linked to the 1963 assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in a way very few others are… he was hit by fragments from a ricocheting bullet that was aimed at Kennedy…

Tague says it was “a pure accident” that he was close enough to JFK in Dealey Plaza to be hit by a bullet meant for the president. On that November day, Tague was only vaguely aware that Kennedy was visiting Dallas, and had no interest in viewing the motorcade. He had a noon luncheon date in downtown Dallas with the woman who would later become his wife and was running late. Just before 12:30, he hurriedly pulled off of Stemmons Freeway onto Commerce Street, driving under a triple underpass. Just as he emerged from the underpass, there was a line of cars stopped directly in front of him. Tague put his vehicle into park, walked out of the car and stepped into history.

Despite his best efforts, Tague has been unable to put the event behind himself – which he has now spent years studying – and will shortly publish a new book on the assassination, in which he claims to have discovered who was really behind the shooting.

New insights into the short presidency of John F Kennedy are sure to come to light following the decision of his daughter, Caroline, to make public six hours of interviews recorded with Jacqueline Kennedy in 1964.

The interviews were held in Kennedy’s home in Washington in the spring of 1964, with the historian and Kennedy family friend Arthur Schlesinger Jr acting as interlocutor. According to Hyperion, the president’s widow talks with rare intimacy about her married life in the White House; how she came to see her role as first lady develop during almost three years in the role; her husband’s early political campaigns and handling of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962; and his ambitions in office should he have won a second term.

The almost forgotten tapes have spent the last 45 years in high security storage at the John F Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the mission, the John F. Kennedy Museum and Library launches We Choose The Moon, which will effectively “replay” the entire flight starting from the launch countdown.

WeChooseTheMoon.org – goes live at 8:02 a.m. Thursday, 90 minutes before the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. It will track the capsule’s route from the Earth to the Moon, ending with the moon landing and Armstrong’s walk – in real time, but 40 years later.

Kennedy murder documents made public

While I believe the recently “discovered” documents and artifacts don’t shed any new light on the “mystery” of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, will anyone really care?

Officials in Texas have unveiled a trove of long-hidden memorabilia related to the assassination of president John F. Kennedy which they predict will fan conspiracy theories about the killing. Dallas County district attorney Craig Watkins Monday showed off a dozen boxes filled with papers and items found inside a courthouse safe, where they had lain for decades

The apparent transcript of a conversation between Lee Harvey Oswald (who shot Kennedy) and Jack Ruby (who went on to shoot Oswald), which is in-fact a movie script, drafted by a past Dallas County District Attorney, is probably bound to excite the imaginations of many self respecting conspiracy theorists however.

Those not happy with Kenneth Rahn’s version of events regarding the shooting of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963, and who remain convinced other forces were at work that day, may find this of interest.

Abraham Zapruder filmed the now notorious footage of Kennedy’s assassination. At the urging of his secretary, Zapruder returned home from work to collect his movie camera. “That way you will have something to show your grandchildren,” she said in prompting him to film the president’s motorcade as it drove through downtown Dallas.

To call his secretary’s words an understatement is probably an understatement itself. Zapruder duly reached the Dealey Plaza, started filming, and the rest is history.

Was this as coincidental as we have been led to believe though? Gregory Burnham chooses to differ, and offers a little more information on the background of Zapruder. Hmm…

I couldn’t let the 40th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination pass by with out a mention.

According to a recent article published in The Guardian by Kenneth Rahn, who is Professor Emeritus at the University of Rhode Island, the shooting was far more straight forward than many people believe.

It is over. We must realise that this horrible event was not some evil plot. It was the product of chance, not conspiracy.

Rahn is part of a group who have studied all aspects of Kennedy’s assassination and have concluded there was no conspiracy, and that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin. There was no second shooter on the grassy knoll.

The real story of the assassination is this: Kennedy was killed by one misfit guy, a cheap but effective rifle, a good vantage point from the building where he worked and a run of fortuitous events.