Today in History: November 22, John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas

Today is Sunday, Nov. 22, the 326th day of 2026. There are 39 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Nov. 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was shot to death while riding in a motorcade in Dallas; Texas Gov. John B. Connally, a passenger in the same car as Kennedy, was seriously wounded. Suspected gunman Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was soon after sworn in as president.

Also on this date:

In 1718, English pirate Edward Teach — better known as “Blackbeard” — was killed in a battle with British naval forces near Ocracoke Island, North Carolina.

In 1935, the flying boat China Clipper took off from Alameda, California, carrying more than 100,000 pieces of mail on the first trans-Pacific airmail flight.

In 1986, 20-year-old Mike Tyson became the youngest heavyweight boxing champion in history, stopping WBC titleholder Trevor Berbick in the second round of their championship bout in Las Vegas.

In 1990, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced her resignation after failing to secure the margin needed for reelection as Conservative Party leader on the first ballot.

In 2005, Angela Merkel took office as Germany’s first female chancellor.

In 2010, a panicked crush at a festival in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh left nearly 350 people dead and hundreds injured in what the prime minister called the country’s worst tragedy since the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror in the 1970s.

In 2017, Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb general whose forces carried out the 1995 Srebrenica massacre — the worst in Europe since World War II — was convicted of genocide and other crimes by the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and sentenced to life in prison. (Mladić died in prison in August 2026 at age 84.)

In 2022, a Walmart manager opened fire in a break room before a routine employee meeting at a company store in Chesapeake, Virginia, killing six people and wounding six others before fatally shooting himself.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor-filmmaker Terry Gilliam is 86. Hockey Hall of Famer Jacques Laperrière is 85. Astronaut Guion Bluford is 84. Tennis Hall of Famer Billie Jean King is 83. Rock musician-actor Steven Van Zandt is 76. Rock musician Tina Weymouth (Talking Heads) is 76. Actor Richard Kind is 70. Actor Jamie Lee Curtis is 68. Actor Mads Mikkelsen is 61. Tennis Hall of Famer Boris Becker is 59. Actor Scarlett Johansson is 42. Actor Alden Ehrenreich is 37. Actor Dacre Montgomery is 32. Model and fashion entrepreneur Hailey Bieber is 30. Actor Auliʻi Cravalho is 26.