1. The Press Secretary for Jacqueline Kennedy, the widow of John F. Kennedy, announced her engagement to Aristotle Onassis.
The announcement would prove to be controversial. Kennedy was to be married the next week and came less than one week after Mrs. Kennedy had been granted Secret Service protection. The marriage would result in the end of that protection, but not of the controversy.
Onassis was one of the richest men in the world and had been a long time friend of Mrs. Kennedy's. The marriage brought an element of security to her, which was lacking in part to the violence of the times, but the extremely wealth Onassis was a controversial figure. Jackie Kennedy was his second marriage, his first being to Athina Lavanos when he was 40 and she was 17 years old. The couple's marriage had started out as a very happy one but had declined and ended in divorce which meant that questions were raised about the legitimacy of his later marriage to Kennedy from a Catholic prospective in an era when there was much less public tolerance of such things than there is now, particularly given the enormous attachment of American Catholics to John F. Kennedy (his own departures from morality were not publicly known and were shielded by the press at the time). Onassis, additionally, ended a relationship with Maria Calles in order to marry Kennedy.
Jackie Kennedy Onassis would outlive her second husband who died of natural causes in 1975. Calles was reportedly devastated by his death and never recovered from it.
The degree to which Jackie Kennedy Onassis was followed by Americans, particularly American women, is hard to imagine at the present time. She had a degree of following which is really only analogous to members of the British royal family and her treatment was quite similar.
2, The Steve McQueen film Bullitt, with its legendary car chase film, was released.
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