Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination from a Historian's Perspective.

AbstractThe author of this Article, an internationally recognized coroner perhaps best known among laymen for his incisive and tenacious criticism of the Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination, turns his attention to the federal government's 1976-1977 Swine Flu Immunization Program. Dr. Wecht contends that although this program may have been viewed by its key proponents as having great public health importance, or perhaps even political value, its creation and continuation nevertheless were scientifically unjustified. Furthermore, he contends, the federal government failed to inform the public adequately of important facts about the program's origins and progress, and it mismanaged the program in several important respects. Among the topics he discusses are swine flu's epidemiological history (including the 1976 Fort Dix outbreak that propelled swine flu into the national consciousness); the key elements leading to the government's decision to immunize; the government's failure to reevaluate the program seriously as problems arose; the shortcomings of the federal swine flu statute; the inadequacy of the government's investigation of the deaths of three persons in Pittsburgh within a few hours after being vaccinated (a matter that was of immediate concern to the author in his role as Coroner of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania); the long-delayed termination of the program following the emergence of a possible statistical link between the immunizations and an increase in the incidence of the Guillain-Barré Syndrome; the financial and human costs of the program; and the need for calmer, more objective decision making in future situations where immunization of the general populace is being considered.

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Kennedy Assassination, Dallas, 1963

Getting the Picture ◽

10.4324/9781003103547-24 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 85-87

Author(s):

David Lubin

Keyword(s):

Kennedy Assassination

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BEYOND DALLAS: History, Narrative, and the Struggle for Meaning in the Kennedy Assassination

American History Goes to the Movies ◽

10.4324/9780203833735-12 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 199-233

Keyword(s):

Kennedy Assassination

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The Neutrino Revolution

Much Ado about (Practically) Nothing ◽

10.1093/oso/9780195393965.003.0022 ◽

2010 ◽

Author(s):

David Fisher

Keyword(s):

Quantum Mechanics ◽

Binding Energy ◽

Mass Spectrometer ◽

Noble Gases ◽

Iron Meteorite ◽

Ancient History ◽

Basic Part ◽

Atomic Nuclei ◽

Kennedy Assassination

But while all this was going on, while the noble gases were being used to work out all the details of stellar processes, a different argon-based experiment was sneaking in and threatening to upset the whole applecart. I first began to learn about it way back in the fading summer of 1958, when I pulled myself up off the Westhampton sands and sauntered back to the lab, angry—in my own self-importance—that Gert Friedlander had hopped off to Europe and left me on my own. You’ll remember Ray Davis, in whose lab I was to work on the iron meteorite K/Ar problem? Well, I first met him that summer when I found Ollie Schaeffer and his mass spectrometer. In the lab next door was this courtly, soft-spoken Southern gentleman, Raymond Davis, Junior, who was putting together a most unlikely experiment and who invited me to join him in his journey into the unknown. Except that it wasn’t really unknown. It was a basic part of quantum mechanics, the theory describing the inner workings of atomic nuclei, which was put together largely during the 1920s and ‘30s—some thirty years before my sojourn at Brookhaven, and which I considered a time of ancient history, not quite real. Oh, I accepted that the 1920s had really existed, but in an intellectual way only, as a sort of existential fantasy—they had happened before I was born. (I first noticed this in others when, in the 1980s, I referred during a class lecture to the Kennedy assassination and was received with blank, uninterested stares. The students knew about it, but it had happened before they were born and had the same status as the Lincoln assassination: it was true, certainly, but basically it was a story grown-ups told.) It’s hard to realize that I’m writing this now more than twice as far removed from my Brookhaven years as those years were from the beginnings of quantum mechanics. So anyhow, it was known back then that the nuclei of atoms were held together by a binding energy which can be expressed through Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2.

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Chapter 28

Cary Grant, the Making of a Hollywood Legend ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190053130.003.0029 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 395-412

Author(s):

Mark Glancy

Keyword(s):

Young Women ◽

Family Background ◽

South Pacific ◽

Second World War ◽

Private Life ◽

The Other ◽

World War ◽

Box Office ◽

Kennedy Assassination ◽

Second World

In the early 1960s, when Cary Grant was at the height of his popularity, he began to worry that he was too old to play the romantic leading man. He would not agree to make Charade (1963) until director Stanley Donen and screenwriter Peter Stone agreed to change the script so that his young co-star, Audrey Hepburn, is seen to chase after him (rather than the other way around). In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, critics found this Hitchcockian comedy-thriller to be too violent, but it was another box-office hit and remains a fan favorite today. He did not consider himself too old to chase young women in his private life, and his relationship with actress Dyan Cannon grew more serious. When journalist Joe Hyams sued him for libel, in response to Grant’s denying that he had been interviewed by Hyams, they reached an out of court settlement. Grant agreed to collaborate with the journalist on the article that eventually emerged as “Archie Leach by Cary Grant,” a lengthy, truthful account of his family background and youth. In another hit comedy, Father Goose (1964), he broke free of his debonair image to play a drunken recluse who must look after schoolgirls stranded in the South Pacific at the beginning of the Second World War. His final film, Walk, Don’t Run (1966), was a gentle comedy set during the Tokyo Olympics, with a lively score by composer Quincy Jones, who became a close personal friend. By the time Walk, Don’t Run was released, he had married Dyan Cannon, and they had a daughter together, Jennifer Grant. This convinced Grant that it was finally time to retire.

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