FORTY years ago today, John F Kennedy was shot dead as he waved to crowds of loyal supporters from a motorcade travelling through Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas.

His wife, Jackie, was sitting alongside as bullets pierced her husband's throat and then, fatally, the back of his head.

Cries of panic and shock ripped through the Plaza as the youngest elected president and American icon slumped in his seat.

He was pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital, 25 minutes after the shooting. He was 47.

In Britain, news of the assassination and the arrest of killer Lee Harvey Oswald was flashed to viewers on the BBC just before 7.40pm.

Just as younger generations will long remember where they were that grey, Sunday morning when Princess Diana died, so the moment became indelibly stamped on the minds of millions around the world.

In Worcester, the news shattered the heady illusions of self-confessed 16-year-old "rebel" David Barlow, who'd go on to become a city councillor.

"I was a pupil at King's School at the time and a Beatles fanatic," said Coun Barlow, now 56.

"I was driving to see my girlfriend in Hartlebury when I heard the news and clearly remember spending the whole evening and night glued to the television.

"You just didn't know how to react. Until then, it had been such an uplifting time following the drabber 50s, Beatlemania, the cultural revolution in Carnaby Street and the positive feeling surrounding the early 60s.

"We didn't have young prime ministers or presidents back then, and the 1,000 days of Camelot had given us enormous hope.

"After the assassination, however, all these terrible things started happening. First Martin Luther King, then Bobby Kennedy, were killed, which cast a terrible cloud over many of us of that young age.

"It was like a dark side that seemed to grow and grow and we thought 'Can this really be happening?'"

In the early hours of Saturday, November 23, the Evening News presses rolled to put an assassination special on the streets of the city.

In it, the Mayor, Coun Hilda Lettice, revealed how "deeply stunned and shocked" she was by the tragedy.

"President Kennedy had done so much to help heal the breach between the West and Russia," she said. "He'd achieved so much, and I think he'll be best remembered for the part he played in bringing about an agreement for the partial ban of nuclear tests.

"He was a man who believed in his own convictions and he went everywhere to see for himself.

"It was because of this that he died in the service of his country."

The special was almost a wasted effort as, despite reporters and sub-editors frantically rushing to the Evening News' Trinity office just before 8pm, no news sellers could be found and piles of the edition had to be dumped on street corners around 7am the next day.

"I heard the news at home, then cycled down to the Crown pub, in Broad Street, where the barmaid announced the news," said Memory Lane writer Mike Grundy, then the Evening News' 25-year-old chief reporter.

"Everyone went silent for a few minutes before we all rushed to the office to get the paper out.

"Press Association news came over via teleprinters then and the whole place was frantic."

JFK, his glamorous wife and the whole Kennedy family captured millions of people's imaginations, especially in Britain.

In 1960, the youngest elected president signified a new generation in power. He'd been a Second World War US Navy officer, he personified energy and vitality, and had a Hollywood-esque glamour as well as formidable brains in the corridors of power.

The Kennedy children had been part of London society in the 1930s and early 1940s, when father Joseph Kennedy was US Ambassador. Their close links with fashionable aristocracy and the political class gave them unique appeal.

But his assassination wiped clean a personal and political slate that carried some heavy marks, including corruption, promiscuity, illness and scandal, all of which were largely ignored by the Press during his reign.

"There was a bit of a mythology about it," said Coun Barlow. "It's the same with Princess Diana. Would she have carried on being the people's princess if she hadn't died?"

So, did Oswald really pull the trigger or not?

JFK's assassination has long sparked a number of different conspiracy theories.

Many have disputed whether Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal shots from the Texas School Book Depository building, where he worked.

Forty-five minutes after the three bullets were fired - the second also hit Governor John Connally in the back - Oswald was arrested and charged, but gunned down two days later by club owner Jack Ruby.

The Warren Commission was set up one week later and, after months of investigation, declared that Oswald had acted alone. But many witnesses said shots were fired from a grassy knoll, and some told of mysterious Secret Service men in the Plaza.

In three years after the murders, 18 material witnesses died.

Umbrella

Six were killed by gunfire, three in crashes, two by suicide, one from a cut throat, one from a karate chop to the neck, three from heart attacks and two from natural causes.

A Select Committee looked into the matter but was unable to come to any conclusion.

Some believe JFK was the victim of an elaborate CIA assassination plot, while many believe two of the most suspicious people at Dealey Plaza that day were two men standing near Kennedy when the fatal shots were fired.

One held an open umbrella, even though it was a glorious sunny day, while the other stood at the kerb and waved his arm in the air.

Both the Dallas Police and the Warren Commission ignored them throughout their investigations, although theories suggest both gave signals for the hidden gunman, presuming that Kennedy was killed by a co-ordinated crossfire or that the umbrella was a dart-firing weapon.