A case-wide chronology for moving between biography, Cold War context, the Dallas weekend, investigation milestones, and release history.
Switch views depending on the question: zoom out for the whole record, isolate the 72-hour Dallas sequence, or read the timeline by decade.
October 18, 1939 through January 30, 2026. Investigation is the largest category.
Start with events that already have linked documents or external source anchors, then jump into the full timeline.
12 hour-by-hour events from the motorcade through the transfer of Oswald and his shooting by Ruby. Times are local Central Standard Time as recorded in the Warren Commission Report and HSCA chronology.
CIA case officer Nestor Sanchez meets Rolando Cubela (AMLASH-1) in Paris and passes him a poison pen. The meeting concerns a plot against Fidel Castro and is underway at the same hour as the assassination in Dallas. Documented in the Church Committee record.
President Kennedy, Mrs. Kennedy, Vice President Johnson, Governor Connally, and staff arrive at Dallas Love Field.
Ten-car presidential motorcade departs Love Field for the Trade Mart via Main Street, Houston Street, and Elm Street through Dealey Plaza.
Shots are fired at the presidential motorcade as it passes the Texas School Book Depository. The Warren Commission concluded three shots were fired; the HSCA's 1979 acoustic analysis suggested a possible fourth, a finding later rejected by the NAS/Ramsey Panel. President Kennedy is fatally wounded; Governor Connally is seriously wounded; bystander James Tague sustains a minor injury from a bullet or fragment striking the curb of Main Street.
President Kennedy is pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital. Governor Connally survives his wounds.
Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit is shot and killed on East 10th Street about 100 feet east of Patton Avenue in Oak Cliff. At least nine witnesses positively identify Oswald — five in police lineups by the evening of November 22, a sixth the next day, and three more from photographs.
Dallas Police arrest Lee Harvey Oswald inside the Texas Theatre, 231 West Jefferson Boulevard, Oak Cliff. He is charged with the Tippit murder the same evening, and with the Kennedy assassination later that night.
Aboard Air Force One at Love Field, Judge Sarah T. Hughes administers the oath of office to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Marina Oswald is shown the CE-133 backyard photographs and testifies that she took them in the backyard of the Neely Street residence in late March or early April 1963.
The state funeral procession passes from the White House to St. Matthew's Cathedral, followed by burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
Lee Harvey Oswald is pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where President Kennedy was pronounced dead 47 hours earlier.