Fifty years to the day since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Americans still can’t find consensus on who pulled the trigger. With more than 60 percent of the country believing there was a conspiracy (involving the CIA or even Vice President Lyndon Johnson), discussion still rages to this day over what actually transpired in Dealey Plaza.
Cliff Judy takes a look at some of the theories and the people that endorse them:
With the rapid pace that information flows at these days, it’s no wonder so many different theories can spread widely so quickly. TIME looks back at the day of the assassination and the way that many people learned about it – through breaking news reports on telvision, which back then was still in its infancy. Watch how 1963 TV newsmen dealt with the stream of information and ultimately broke the news the president was dead – a stark contrast to today’s information overload.
Former LIFE editor Richard B. Stolley was one of the first people in the world to see the 8mm footage shot by local garment manufacturer Abraham Zapruder, which came to be known as “The Zapruder Film.” Here he talks about what it was like to see that footage for the first time, the clamor to see it across the country and how LIFE magazine ended up buying exclusive world-wide rights to the footage: