The Biggest News Events

 I will mention only three here, but there is a list of 50 big news events of all time.  What I find most interesting is that no list includes the coverage of the Viet Nam War.  Although granted ten years of coverage might be too much to narrow anything down to a single event of that war.  But three biggest news events were the asassination of JFK, the moon landing, and the assassination of MLK, Jr., all having taken place in the 60's.  

First of all, the assassination of JFK is full of all kinds of conspiracy theories from one that says Lee Harvey Oswald couldn't have done it to how Jack Ruby even managed to kill Oswald.  Was the Mob involved or the CIA?  What aboit that mysterious man on the grassy knoll?  Or could it have been Castro and the Cuban government?  And is there a tie-in with the death of Marilyn Monroe?  There is so much we don't know.  

It was Walter Cronkite who first broke the news to the country.  He did all he could do to hide his own grief at the time.  But his voice and demeanor was comforting to a grieving nation.  He is credited with breaking the news as gently as he could almost matter-of-factly.  But even today one can watch the old video tapes on YouTube to see how the news broke.  

Another big news event took place at the end of the decade.  The US was a war-weary nation and we needed some good news.  90 million people stayed up late in July of 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong put the first foot print in the dust of the moon and said that now famous sentence.  We watched on our small TVs, those B&W images,  myself included, as the astronauts seemed to hop on the moonscape and move so effortlessly in their moon suits.  No one at the time questioned whether the scenes were shot from a Hollywood studio.  Why would NASA pay Hollywood for such an event to be staged without stars in the sky?  Wouldn't one think that NASA would think of that if they went through the trouble of staging that?  

And these two events raise more theory conspiring questions than just about any other events recorded by news outlets in recent history.  Who shot JFK?  And did we really go to the moon?  No other news events raise more questions.  Yes, there are those who wonder whether J. Edgar Hoover directed the assassination of Martin Luther King,Jr. and not James Earl Ray, but evidence pointed to James Earl Ray, and he was tried and went to prison.  

Many of us wonder what a trial of Lee Harvey Oswald would reveal.  His death ended any further investigations.  But even today many of us wonder.  It is believed that if NASA paid Hollywood prices for the equipment and personel needed to stage such an event, it would have been cost prohibitive to be staged.  They would have to convince the most jaded minds with every little detail and then hold all invoilved to secrecy.  And then James Earl Ray often mentioned a man named Raul who was responsible for the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Such a man was never found.  

Well, these are my thoughts today as I smoke my Gettysburg pipe again  this morning, as it is raining, and i find myself in the garage with some Prince Albert.  Thank you for your time and Peace to each one of you.

Dave