Revival History

  The first execution by lethal injection takes place at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. Charles Brooks, Jr., convicted of murdering an auto mechanic, received an intravenous injection of sodium pentathol, the barbiturate that is known as a “truth serum” when administered in lesser doses. Texas, the national leader in executions, adopted the lethal injection procedure as a more humane method of carrying out its death sentences, as opposed to the standard techniques of death by gas, electrocution, or hanging. During the next decade, 32 states, the federal government, and the U.S. military all took up the lethal injection method. After several years of practical development, execution authorities adopted a lethal injection procedure in which three separate drugs are injected successively into the convict’s bloodstream. The first drug, sodium thiopental, a barbiturate, renders the prisoner unconscious, the next, pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant, paralyses the diaph...

 On this day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy is shot and killed in Dallas, Texas. You’ve heard the story many times, and you know the many controversies surrounding the story of JFK’s assassination. But do you know what happened to Jackie Kennedy in the days and weeks after his death? The First Lady was there when the President was killed, of course. She famously stood next to Lyndon B. Johnson when he took the presidential oath of office on Air Force One. She was still wearing the blood-stained pink suit that she’d been wearing all day. “I want them to see what they have done to Jack,” she told Lady Bird Johnson.  When Jackie returned home, she was immediately confronted with many decisions, both big and small. For one thing, JFK’s funeral had to be planned. Jackie decided that he should be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, not in Massachusetts. “He belongs to the people,” she said. She arranged for an eternal flame to be lit near JFK’s grave.  Jackie was still g...