With one of the kids doing a school project on JFK, we asked my partner's dad for his 'where were you when' memory.
It turns out he was on duty as an air traffic controller, in the tower at Prestwick Airport. Someone heard a BBC news bulletin on the radio in the airport lounge, and John used the emergency phone to call the USAF on the other side of the airfield and see if they knew anything. (They didn't).
With the Cuban missile crisis fresh in their minds, they all thought that the Russians had shot Kennedy, and that nuclear war was imminent. John's wife Shirley - alone in the house with four very young children - was terrified.
So for some people at least, the power of that iconic moment was less about the Zapruder film, and more about thinking you're about to die.
