The Assassination Attempt That Time Forgot

Everybody thinks 1963 when you mention the Kennedy assassination.

Dallas. Motorcade. Zapruder film.

But here’s the part hardly anyone remembers: somebody almost killed John F. Kennedy before he even unpacked his socks in the White House.

December 1960. Kennedy has just beaten Richard Nixon in one of the tightest elections in American history. He’s 43, tan, glamorous, and hanging out in Palm Beach, Florida, soaking up some sun before Inauguration Day. Jackie’s there. The kids are there. The future looks polished and presidential.

Enter Richard Paul Pavlick. Seventy-three years old. Retired postal worker. Not exactly a criminal mastermind—more like your grumpy neighbor who thinks the country’s going downhill and has way too much time to think about it. He decided Kennedy was too rich, too Catholic, too something. So he did what unstable men with access to dynamite sometimes do.

He bought a lot. Ten sticks.

Pavlick packed his Buick full of explosives and parked near the church Kennedy attended on December 11, 1960. The plan? Blow himself up and take the president-elect with him. No sniper’s nest. No grassy knoll. Just a car bomb and a button.

And then history blinked.

Jackie and Caroline came out of the house to say goodbye before Kennedy left for church. Pavlick watched. He later said he didn’t want to hurt the family.

So he didn’t push the button.

That’s it. That’s the hinge of history. A 73-year-old man sitting in a parked Buick decided, at the last second, not to blow up the next President of the United States.

A few days later, the Secret Service picked him up after a tip from a suspicious postal worker back home. They found the dynamite. Kennedy took the oath in January 1961.

And we all remember 1963.

Almost nobody remembers how close we came in 1960.

The Sponsor Who Tried To Slim Down Alfred Hitchcock

 

By the mid-1950s, Alfred Hitchcock was already a brand.

 

Not just a director, or a silhouette.

 

That rounded profile. The jowls. The unmistakable shape that opened every episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1955 as his outline stepped into frame.

 

He wasn’t just introducing thrillers. He was a thriller. Which made what happened next both absurd and very American.

 

Television in the 1950s ran on sponsors. Not ads scattered throughout a show—one big sponsor who practically owned the hour. If you were lucky, they paid the bills and stayed quiet. If you weren’t, they had opinions.

 

And sponsors had opinions about the image.

 

Hitchcock wasn’t a slender man. He cultivated the look: dark suit, minimal movement, dry expression, body used almost like a prop. His size was part of the joke. He would deadpan about his appetite, his doctors, his “strict” diets that clearly weren’t working.

 

But sponsors worried.

 

Would audiences respond better if the famous director looked… healthier? More trim? More in line with the emerging television image of polished, aspirational America?

How The Brady Bunch Won The Ratings

 

Television history is weird.

 

Today it’s all, “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” Back then? The Brady Bunch barely cracked the Top 40. From 1969 to 1974, it never touched the Nielsen Top 30. It wasn’t a disaster, but it wasn’t must see TV either.

 

And it was fighting giants.

 

Here’s Lucy still had Lucille Ball pulling big numbers. The Partridge Family had cooler hair and hit songs. All in the Family stomped through prime time with politics, shouting matches, and actual controversy. While Archie Bunker argued about the state of America, the Bradys debated broken vases, who got the attic bedroom, and teenage infatuation.

 

TV in the early ’70s was getting sharp edges. The Bradys stayed pastel.

 

So how does a middle-of-the-pack sitcom turn into a cultural mascot?

 

Reruns.

 

Afternoon syndication in the mid-’70s changed everything. Kids came home from school, and there they were: six smiling squares in that iconic grid. Bright bell-bottoms. Orange-and-green kitchen. Life lessons wrapped up before dinner. No yelling about the news. No moral hangover. Just hugs on the staircase.

 

It became comfort food.

The Night Everyone Ate A Goldfish

 

A strange fad swept American college campuses in the 1930s.

 

Students began swallowing live goldfish.

 

It started as a dare. One student gulped a goldfish at a party. Someone else did it faster. Soon it became a competition—who could swallow the most, the biggest, or the fastest.

 

The stunts drew crowds. Photographs appeared in the newspapers. What began as a joke turned into a national trend.

 

Administrators were horrified. Animal welfare groups protested. Colleges banned the practice. Some students were arrested or expelled.

 

Medical experts warned of parasites and choking. That didn’t slow it down.

 

By the end of the decade, swallowing goldfish had lost its shock value and disappeared.

 

All that remained was the memory of when America decided that eating a live fish was entertainment.

How A Gunfight Turned Into A Glamour Shoot

In April 1934, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were holed up in a garage apartment in Joplin, Missouri.

The neighbors noticed the strange cars, the noise, and the  “we swear we’re not criminals” energy. So the police came knocking.

Knocking turned into shooting.

Bullets chewed up the walls. Windows exploded. Two officers were killed. Bonnie and Clyde blasted their way out and roared off in a stolen car.

They left behind shirts. Plates. A half-eaten meal. And a camera.

Inside that camera? The worst PR decision in outlaw history.

When police developed the film, they found Bonnie puffing on a cigar like a five-foot-tall mob boss. Clyde posed with a shotgun like he was auditioning for a gangster movie. They grinned, and flirted with danger, practically winking at the law.

The newspapers lost their minds.

America, knee-deep in the Great Depression, suddenly had outlaw pinups. Forget bank statements—people wanted Bonnie’s smirk and Clyde’s swagger. The photos made them look bold. Romantic. Almost fun.

The truth was somewhat different. They were broke, exhausted, and constantly running for their lives. But once those pictures hit print, it was over. The Barrow Gang didn’t just flee Joplin.

They fled straight into legend. All because someone forgot to grab the camera on the way out.

Chandler Bing Was He Or Wasn't He

 

Early test audiences watched Chandler Bing and tilted their heads.

Wait. Is he…?

Nobody said he was gay. The script didn’t say it. The creators were clear: Chandler was always written as straight. But in 1994, network TV had a narrow template for sitcom masculinity. You were suave. Dumb. Or aggressively confident. Chandler was none of those things.

He was twitchy. Sarcastic. Emotionally weird in a charming way. He made jokes when he was uncomfortable. Which was always.

So some early viewers filled in the blanks.

The writers noticed.

Instead of swatting the assumption away, they squeezed it for laughs. Suddenly Chandler was the guy who kept getting mistaken for being gay. Coworkers assumed it. Strangers assumed it. His friends teased him. He over corrected. “I’m not gay!” became part of the rhythm.

Irony? The joke worked because Chandler wasn’t traditionally macho. He didn’t strut or chest-thump. He panicked about commitment and cracked jokes about his feelings. For a 1990s audience, that ambiguity read as suspicious.

Four Gold Medals And One Very Odd Olympics

 

Berlin, 1936. The stadium was enormous, with flags everywhere. Adolf Hitler intended the Olympic Games to be a global advertisement for Nazi ideology — and the supposed superiority of the “Aryan” athlete.

Then Jesse Owens showed up.

Owens, a 22-year-old sprinter from Ohio State University, arrived in Berlin with speed that was already record-breaking.

On August 3, he won the 100 meters. A day later, he won the long jump. Then came the 200 meters. And finally, the 4x100-meter relay.

Four gold medals.

Each victory happened inside a stadium packed with German spectators and watched by the world. The optics were unavoidable. The athlete dominating Hitler’s carefully staged spectacle was a Black American.

The irony was immediate.

The long jump may have been the most dramatic moment. Owens fouled his first two qualifying attempts. On the brink of elimination, he received quiet advice from German competitor Luz Long, who suggested adjusting his takeoff point to ensure a legal jump.

Owens followed the tip, qualified, and ultimately won gold. Long took silver. The two men walked arm-in-arm afterward — a moment that cut directly against the racial narratives being promoted around them.

On the first day of the competition, Hitler only congratulated German winners. Olympic officials said he would need to greet all medalists or none. He chose none. By the time Owens collected his medals, Hitler had stopped congratulating the athletes.