Kennedy still an inspirational figure

IT was exactly 12.30pm when the shots rang out and John F Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States of America, slumped forward in the open-top limousine carrying him through the streets of Dallas.

Forty years later, Kennedy remains an inspirational figure, a president more popular in death than in life.

Politics had brought the 46-year-old president to Texas, a pivotal and worrisome state in his 1964 re-election plans.