Timeline of the John F. Kennedy assassination Houston Street and slowly approached the Texas School Book Depository head-on. According to witnesses, the shooting occurred shortly after the limousine made the sharp left-hand turn from Houston onto Elm Street. Most of the witnesses recalled that the first shot was fired after the president had started waving with his right hand. Several onlookers recalled hearing three shots, with the second and third shots bunched distinctly much closer together than the first and second shots. Witnesses estimate that from three to eight shots were fired. The Zapruder film shows the President re-emerging in the footage after being temporarily hidden from
Foreign policy of the John F. Kennedy administration presence, initially seizing the provincial capital of Phuoc Vinh. By the end of 1961 the American advisers in Vietnam numbered 3,205 and that number increased from 11,000 in 1962 to 16,000 by late 1963, but Kennedy was reluctant to order a full-scale deployment of troops. Before his assassination, Kennedy used military advisors and special forces in Vietnam almost exclusively. A year and three months later on March 8, 1965, his successor, President Lyndon Johnson, committed the first combat troops to Vietnam and greatly escalated U.S. involvement, with forces reaching 184,000 that year and 536,000 in 1968. In late 1961, President