Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1960s
Native son Lyndon Baines Johnson was from Stonewall, east of Austin, in south-central
Texas. Johnson, affectionately known as LBJ, had a well-deserved reputation for being a
hard-nosed Southern Democrat. He was as stubborn as a barn full of mules, as dirty a polit-
ical fighter as he needed to be, and fiercely loyal to Texas in the fight for pork-barrel gov-
ernment contracts. As majority leader of the US Senate, Johnson accepted the vice-presid-
ential nomination in 1960.
On November 22, 1963, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Vice President Johnson
rode in separate open limousines through downtown Dallas. At 12:30pm, JFK was shot.
Texas governor John M Connally, riding in the seat in front of the president, was also in-
jured by gunfire. The president died at 1pm; Connally survived. Later that day, as
Kennedy's body was being transported to Washington, DC, Vice President Johnson took
the oath of office aboard Air Force One, the presidential airplane, with Jacqueline Kennedy
standing at his side. LBJ defeated Barry Goldwater in the presidential election of 1964, and
his administration oversaw some of the USA's most tumultuous, tragic, and socially cata-
lyzing events, including the Vietnam War and Civil Rights Movement.
NASA's space shuttle fleet - Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour - flew a total of 135
missions between 1979 and July 2011.
