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September 23, 2009, The Telegraph, What connects John F Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher and John Galt?, by Daniel Hannan,

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September 23, 2009, The Telegraph, What connects John F Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher and John Galt?, by Daniel Hannan,

One last tip as I fly back from Dallas. Should you ever find yourself in this part of the world, visit the Sixth Floor Museum: the permanent exhibition on the sixth floor of the building from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F Kennedy.

The organisers of the museum face the same challenge as producers of Shakespeare's plays: how to inject drama into a narrative that is already familiar to the audience. They pull it off brilliantly, on the basis of a simple premise: that the contemporary footage is so gripping as to require little elaboration.

For example, the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald at Dallas Police Headquarters, captured live on television, is so extraordinary that you have to keep reminding yourself that you're not watching a thriller.

As for the various theories about what happened, I'm going to leave those for the comment thread. Let me just say that, peering out of that sixth floor window, I reckon it would have been an easy shot.

Oh, the connection? The date. JFK was assassinated on 22 November 1963. Margaret Thatcher was toppled on 22 November 1990. And 22 November is the date on which John Galt, hero of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, seizes the airwaves and reveals himself to the nation. (I thought I'd mention this now, because I know that my friend Douglas Carswell MP is racing through the book and, the moment he finishes, will start claiming that it influencedhim before it influenced me. He's touchy that way.) Spooky, eh? The three events where everyone can remember where they were when they heard the news, all on the same date.

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