I was 11, staying home from school because I was sick, as I often was then. My sisters came home early from school, crying. I asked why. When they told me, I said that I didn't believe them. So we turned on the TV—our family's first—and watched hours of coverage, incredulous.

Then Jack Ruby shot Oswald, and we saw it over and over again. Nothing was the same afterward, it seemed. The explanations about JFK's assassination and Oswald's murder didn't ring true. And still don't.

After Eisenhower admitted lying about U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, faith in government was already shaken. Lee Harvey

Oswald was an unlikely assassin, who met an unlikely end. I still remember clearly my incredulity, at age 11...

Incidentally, on the same day, C. S. Lewis died. November 22 was also Charles de Gaulle's birthday.