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Do you remember where you were on that date ?

Wasn't born yet but I have heard it was a supposed 'end of innocence'. I can understand why. Apparently it was televisions coming out party. Maybe it was like 9/11 was for current generation? Certainly has been a day in history I have learned a lot about regardless.......

Hard to believe its been half a century.......

TheLionKing wrote:Do you remember where you were on that date ?

I do, and I suspect that most folks who were 8-10 years old or older at the time do remember that; it seemed almost like the end of the world at first--just so shocking and sad. Same as remembering where you were on 9/11. Lately, there have been a number of opinion pieces about how American history might have taken a very different course had the assassination not taken place, with the main conjecture seeming to be that the Vietnam War wouldn't have happened (which view, unfortunately, ignores the buildup of US troops in Indochina in 1961 and 1962). Of course there's no way of knowing any of this, but I guess it's interesting to speculate.

Home from school for lunch in grade 9 at Edmonds school burnaby. Got the afternoon off. BB

Not around yet.

Recently there was an article about how many Harvard grads cannot name the capital city of Canada. I wonder how many Americans know about their own history. I asked many Americans about this question and none of them can correctly answer.

"There are four American Presidents who were assassinated. Two of them can easily be named. Can you name the other two and as a bonus, name their assassins?"

None of them could answer the other two Presidents, let alone their assassins.

As for the city of Vancouver, despite the incident I'm sure all of them were very anxious as to whether the Lions would advance to their very first Grey Cup appearance as it was the eve of the WDF game 3 against the Roughriders at Empire Stadium. The next day on Nov. 23, the Lions won convincingly 36-1 for their first Grey Cup appearance.

Robbie wrote:Not around yet.

Recently there was an article about how many Harvard grads cannot name the capital city of Canada. I wonder how many Americans know about their own history. I asked many Americans about this question and none of them can correctly answer.

That's surprising about Harvard grads. To some extent, of course, it's more important for us to know about the US--given our dependence on them--than it is for US citizens to know about Canada. I don't take this personally. I think we all get a chuckle from stories about rural Alabamians not knowing much about Canada--as Rick Mercer showed a few years ago by selectively interviewing Americans on the street (who knows how many interviewees knew quite a bit and were thus rejected for the show?). My thought at the time was that the show was just an example of cheap laughs. How many rural Nunavikians could name the second-largest city in the US? Or know whether Southern US citizens speak English? Or just where the state of Georgia is? To some extent, we're at an advantage in knowing about the US because so much of our entertainment and TV exposure comes from that country, whereas few Americans get any view at all of Canada via the media and popular entertainment.

My impression, from spending a few years living in the US, is that most American children are quite literate about their own country. It seemed clear to me that Americans are much more patriotic than we are in Canada, and it is considered important for school children to learn a lot about their history, customs, and values. Civics courses are much more widespread in US schools than in Canadian schools as far as I could tell.

As for our own knowledge of our own history, I wonder just how many graduates of UBC (rated as Canada's second-best research university in world rankings of universities, ranking something like 30th among 500 universities of the world) could tell us what party Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier belonged to (Liberal) or Prime Minister R. B. Bennett (Conservative). Historical illiteracy is very, very common in the modern world, and not just in the US.

Well I was six so would have been in grade one, but I can't say I recall hearing about it in school though I do remember the news programmes in the evening.

And for those literate minded among us, I'll note that on 22 November 1963 we also lost C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley.