All of America was shocked by the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, but some truly fascinating facts about the 35th president didn't come out until decades later.
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00:00All of America was shocked by the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, but
00:06some truly fascinating facts about the 35th president didn't come out until decades later.
00:10At the age of 43, John F. Kennedy was the youngest person ever to be elected to the
00:14presidency, and during his time in office, a not insignificant amount of his public image
00:18was meant to reflect that youthfulness, energy, and vigor. Ultimately, his short-lived administration
00:23was rather successful in projecting that idea, and it's still remembered in that light to
00:27this day.
00:28In reality, though, JFK wasn't actually the strapping young pinnacle of health that his
00:31campaign liked to imply that he was. In fact, the opposite was true. After the assassination,
00:36the Kennedy family reportedly implored the pathologist performing JFK's autopsy not to
00:41look at his abdominal cavity. They did anyway, and officially opened up on their findings
00:45in the early 1990s.
00:46The president's adrenal glands were functionally gone, as he suffered from a typically life-threatening
00:51condition called Addison's disease. He'd been managing his chronic health conditions with
00:55regular treatments, often consisting of corticosteroid injections, a way for him to get the hormones
01:00that he wasn't producing naturally.
01:02In fact, his father put medicine in safe deposit vaults all over the United States.
01:09When exactly he started taking those injections is still something of a mystery. Some biographers
01:13of JFK believe that it started around his 1947 diagnosis, although others speculate
01:18that it was actually sometime earlier than that.
01:21Medical professionals have further explained that such long-term usage of steroids probably
01:25caused some of Kennedy's other chronic health issues, like osteoporosis, fractured vertebrae,
01:30arthritis, and lifelong back pain.
01:32It wasn't a total secret that JFK had Addison's disease. Some people in the press had an inkling
01:37that something was amiss in the politician's medical history. That meant that the then-presidential
01:42contender couldn't just lie about his health by omission. He had to assert a falsehood
01:45directly to the American public.
01:48In the past, JFK's brother Robert F. Kennedy had only mentioned a mild deficiency when
01:52talking about his brother's well-being, as he declared,
01:54"...he does not now nor has he ever had an ailment described classically as Addison's
01:58disease."
01:59JFK himself put out a similar statement, explaining,
02:01"...no one who has the real Addison's disease should run for the presidency, but I do not
02:05have it."
02:06These statements were worded in a sneaky way that made the Kennedys feel like they weren't
02:10technically lying. The original reports of Addison's disease from 1855 all noted that
02:15it appeared after a bout of tuberculosis, yet JFK had been diagnosed with it despite
02:19having never contracted TB. That was enough for the Kennedy family to claim that JFK hadn't
02:24truly been diagnosed with the so-called real Addison's disease, as it hadn't stemmed from
02:28the same source. It was deceitful in a lot of ways, and it was probably used to great
02:33effect.
02:34Historians have genuinely speculated that JFK may have never won the presidency had
02:37the American public known that he was chronically ill.
02:40"...I think Senator Kennedy will win. All the indications from across the country are
02:45that there is a trend in the direction of Senator Kennedy and the Democratic Party."
02:50Secret tapes and politics are most often associated with Richard Nixon, whose secret White House
02:54recording system captured hundreds of hours of conversations that contributed to the president's
02:58resignation. The Watergate scandal took place years after the events of November 22, 1963,
03:04but the discovery of the tapes led to the additional revelation that JFK had made some
03:07recordings of his own. In fact, every president from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Nixon had installed
03:12their own version of a recording system, JFK included. Kennedy's was installed in 1962,
03:18although his exact reasons for doing so have always been an unanswered question.
03:23Members of the Kennedy administration have recalled that his request for surveillance
03:25devices came after the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, as he suspected that it was prompted
03:30by his advisers lying about their level of support for that operation. As best anyone
03:35could tell, the tapes would serve as a permanent record, to keep people honest or to give him
03:39accurate information for later personal use. There were well over 200 hours of audio captured
03:44on those tapes, including a ton of discussion on the Cuban Missile Crisis, but they wouldn't
03:48be fully declassified until about two decades after Kennedy's death.
03:53There's quite a bit of mystery and conspiracy associated with the reports that Marilyn Monroe
03:56had affairs with both John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. The exact accuracy of those
04:01stories is a matter of debate, with some pointing to various times when the two were thought
04:05to be together, or Monroe's sultry performance of Happy Birthday for JFK at a fundraiser
04:09in May 1962. There's even a conspiracy theory connecting the Kennedys to Marilyn Monroe's
04:14death. That said, despite the constant media attention focused on both Kennedy brothers
04:19and Monroe, there was no photographic evidence to prove that they'd ever even been in the
04:22same room â at least, not until decades later.
04:26As it turns out, there's a single known photo to exist that depicts Monroe with not just
04:29one of the Kennedy brothers, but both of them. It was taken at the event in which she famously
04:34sang Happy Birthday by photographer Cecil Stoughton, who proceeded to keep its existence
04:38a complete secret and reportedly only printed a couple of copies from his original negative.
04:43Those prints wouldn't be discovered until after Stoughton's death in 2008, and they
04:47weren't released to the public for a couple more years after that.
04:50Body image issues seem like they might be a more modern topic of conversation, but that
04:54doesn't mean those same issues were non-existent in decades past. Even the famous Kennedys
04:59dealt with some very familiar insecurities. According to Thurston Clark's JFK's Last
05:04Hundred Days, both John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy were very concerned with their respective
05:08public images. Jacqueline wore gloves to hide her hands and nails, and JFK avoided swimming
05:13out of concern for the way his body looked in the water. He was evidently so concerned
05:17about his body weight that he would travel with a bathroom scale in his luggage.
05:20"...and I think that mental and physical health, mental and physical vigor, go hand-in-hand."
05:26In a lot of ways, it wasn't all that far off from how JFK was raised. Kate Clifford Lawson's
05:31Rosemary details the ways in which the Kennedy family's matriarch, Rose Kennedy, ran the
05:36household. She famously kept note cards with each of her children's medical history, and
05:40even instituted a Saturday morning weigh-in, which she used to keep track of their weights.
05:45If ever that number varied just a little too much, she would make changes to their diets
05:48or exercise. These concerns ended up becoming something of a legacy that she left behind
05:53to her kids and grandkids.
05:55The questions and conspiracies surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy are many
05:59and varied, whether they be the mystery of the Umbrella Man or the story of Abraham Zbruder
06:03capturing the assassination on film. That said, there are some interesting recent developments
06:08that do call previous conclusions into question.
06:11For one, the Warren Commission has long insisted that Lee Harvey Oswald was able to fire a
06:14single bullet that passed through both Kennedy and Governor John Connally. That conclusion
06:19was partially drawn after a bullet was found on Connally's stretcher, presumably after
06:23it had slipped out of his wounds. Critics have thought that was all too much for one
06:26bullet to do, though, and took to calling it the Magic Bullet Theory.
06:30Debate has gone back and forth over that, but in late 2023, Secret Service agent Paul
06:35Landis came forward and explained that he was the one who had placed the bullet there.
06:38In fact, he'd been just inches from Kennedy when the attack happened, and in the ensuing
06:42chaos he found the bullet lodged in the seat just behind where Kennedy had been. He picked
06:46it up, only thinking about keeping evidence safe, then placed it on the president's stretcher
06:50â not Connally's â hoping it would solve the mystery.
06:53All I saw was a bullet that was there, and I wanted to preserve it to make sure that
07:00it didn't get lost.
07:01But that only made the mystery even more confusing. If the bullet was never inside of Connally,
07:06then where did it come from?
07:08One of the most famous pieces of evidence from the JFK assassination is known as the
07:12Zabruder film, a 26-second film captured by dressmaker Abraham Zabruder, and the only
07:16known recording of the entire assassination. While common sense would dictate that a video
07:21should clear up all questions, it turns out that the opposite is true.
07:25The Warren Commission was given the film to recreate the timeline of JFK's assassination.
07:29They used it to justify their argument that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted as a lone gunman,
07:33killing Kennedy with a shot from behind. But word eventually got out that Zabruder had
07:37also made a separate request that, frame 313, the moment when Kennedy was lethally shot
07:43would be hidden from the public. That image alone had given him nightmares, and he didn't
07:47the rest of the public to live with that horror. But his wishes didn't last, and in 1975, the
07:52full version of the film, frame 313 included, was played to a national audience. Suddenly,
07:57the whole nation had seen the moment of Kennedy's death.
08:00But keen-eyed critics spotted something strange. The Warren Commission had said that Kennedy
08:04was hit from behind, but frame 313 seemed to depict his head being blown backward, as
08:09if he was hit from the front. Whether that's an indication of a second shooter, an optical
08:13illusion, or any number of other things is a matter of debate. But this reveal spawned
08:17a whole new wave of conspiracy theories as well as widespread distrust of the CIA.
08:22There is one particularly macabre detail from the aftermath of JFK's assassination that
08:27often goes unmentioned. His brain mysteriously disappeared.
08:31Immediately after Kennedy was killed, his body was taken for an autopsy, during which
08:35time the pathologists had to remove his brain. They placed it inside a stainless steel container,
08:40screwed on the lid, and proceeded to forget to return it to Kennedy's body for his funeral.
08:44Instead, that jar was shuttled around with other pieces of medical evidence, put inside
08:48of a cabinet by the Secret Service, then left inside of a locker that was sent to the National
08:52Archives. At that point, the story gets a little bit fuzzier.
08:56All anyone knows for sure is that by 1966, the entire locker had suddenly vanished with
09:00Kennedy's brain inside. It hasn't been spotted since.
09:04As for the possible suspects, one theory posits that Robert F. Kennedy actually pulled off
09:08the theft himself, potentially in order to hide the poor state of his brother's health.
09:12Alternatively, conspiracists have insisted that the heist was done to hide possible evidence
09:16that JFK had actually been shot from the front. Of course, no one is certain of any motives,
09:21nor can anyone say what actually happened to Kennedy's brain in the end.
09:25John F. Kennedy was not only a president at the center of a conspiracy-laden assassination,
09:29but also a member of a prominent political family with a history of hiding information.
09:34So it might not be a surprise that, at least when it comes to his death, there's seemingly
09:38solid evidence that the American public doesn't have access to all of the evidence.
09:41It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The f-----g shooters don't even
09:46know, don't you get it?!
09:48In response to the rising cries of conspiracy and deception regarding the assassination,
09:52Congress passed the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act in 1992. This essentially
09:57mandates that all agencies declassify all related records and submit them to the National
10:02Archives, where they could be accessed by the public within 25 years. That deadline
10:06rolled around in 2017, at which point then-President Donald Trump agreed to extend that deadline.
10:12Come 2023, and President Joe Biden announced that agencies including the CIA and FBI could
10:17release those documents whenever they saw fit, rather than adhering to a deadline at
10:21all.
10:22Responses have been unsurprisingly mixed. Government agencies have explained that declassifying
10:26documents could compromise living assets or locations actively in use since the 1960s.
10:32Cynical members of the public take it all as a sign that the government still has something
10:35worth hiding. Whether that frustration turns into anything is something only more time
10:40can tell.