And now, as Paul Harvey used to say, for the rest of the story.
The assassination of John F. Kennedy wasn't the only news of note on Nov. 22, 1963, nor was it the only event that day with effects still being felt 50 years later.
Culturally, Nov. 22, 1963, was both a sad day, with the deaths of two important authors, and a milestone moment with the release of one of the greatest albums of all time and one of the most important and enduring television shows.
For anyone who used Google yesterday and saw the cute "Google Doodle," they found out that Friday was also the 50th anniversary of the premiere of Doctor Who on the BBC. The show eclipses Star Trek as the most important science-fiction TV show of all time since new episodes continue to air and the popularity of the program, both in Britain as well as around the world, has never waned.
Doctor Who wasn't the only great new thing to reach British audiences on Nov. 22, 1963. With The Beatles made its debut in English record shops that same day. This was the album that arrived just before Beatlemania. A month later, I Want To Hold Your Hand came out and three months later, the band was on the Ed Sullivan Show.
With The Beatles doesn't contain Please Please Me, I Want To Hold Your Hand or She Loves You but it does show the band making the transition from young, enthusiastic bar band into something new and fresh. The 14 tracks are a mix of covers and originals, including Paul McCartney's All My Loving and a 20-year-old George Harrison flashing his guitar chops and taking the lead vocal on Chuck Berry's Roll Over, Beethoven.
Even the cover art for With The Beatles was groundbreaking, with its stylish, heavily-contrasted black-and-white portraits of the four band members, starkly lit from the left side.
While the lads from Liverpool were staking their claim as the greatest band in music history on Nov. 22, 1963, over in Oxford, C.S. Lewis was breathing his last.
Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven novels written and released in the early 1950s, remains his enduring legacy and is still must-read material for young readers to this day. The first novel of the series, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, is the most famous of the books. The entire series is a detailed blend of Christianity with various mythologies.
Meanwhile, on the same day Lewis and Kennedy died, Aldous Huxley passed away in Los Angeles. Huxley is best known to modern readers for his classic 1932 novel Brave New World. The book is often compared to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four because of their dark futuristic visions of humanity, even through Orwell's classic came 17 years later and after the horrors of the Second World War.
Although Orwell is better remembered and more frequently taught in schools, Huxley turned out to be the more accurate prophet.
Brave New World showcases a humanity obsessed with entertaining itself and feeling good at all times with the help of sex and drugs. Mindless consumption is encouraged and spending time alone is seen as anti-social. With so much of everything available at all times, including information, the flood of trivial noise easily distracts everyone from what is really important and meaningful.
Sound familiar?
Although the world's eyes were fixed on Dallas and the shocking assassination of America's young, charismatic president on Nov. 22, 1963, the world marched on elsewhere that day 50 years ago. Two great literary minds died that day, leaving the world with the enduring wisdom and creativity of their works. Meanwhile, two icons of popular culture also arrived on the scene with significant and lasting contributions to music and television.
That was quite a day - Nov. 22, 1963 - and there was certainly more to it than the death of a president.
And now you know, as Harvey would say when he signed off, the rest of the story.
