Dwain Northey (Gen X)

On this day in 1963, the modern American conspiracy industry was born in a flash of gunfire on Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy didn’t just end a presidency—it ignited a national habit of suspicion that has never entirely gone dormant. With the official story offering one neat villain in Lee Harvey Oswald and the grainy chaos of the Zapruder film offering a thousand loose threads, Americans quickly discovered how irresistible it was to fill the gaps with theories, counter-theories, and bar-stool ballistics.

In a country that had just entered the television age, the tragedy unfolded not just as a national trauma but as a puzzle that every citizen felt entitled to solve. Was it the Soviets? The CIA? The Mafia? A second gunman on the grassy knoll? The more authorities insisted on a single explanation, the more people found meaning in the shadows, convinced that the truth was hiding just out of reach. In a way, Dealey Plaza became the birthplace of the “official narrative versus the real story” dynamic that still shapes political discourse today.

The lingering sense that something wasn’t right—that something was withheld, manipulated, or covered up—became a cornerstone of American civic psychology. From Watergate to 9/11, from moon-landing skeptics to election deniers, the Kennedy assassination laid the template: a tragic event, a skeptical public, and the enduring belief that somewhere behind the curtain lurks a secret too explosive to tell.

Sixty-plus years later, the white pergola and the painted X on Elm Street remain quiet, but the echo of that day persists. The shots fired in Dallas didn’t just claim a president—they shattered America’s faith in simple explanations, ensuring that the age of conspiracy would last far longer than any Camelot.