Kennedy’s Dallas itinerary was straightforward: Deliver a luncheon speech at the city’s Trade Mart, then depart for Austin. Texas Governor John Connally and his wife Nellie met the Kennedys at Love Field airport at around 11:40 a.m. Nellie Connally was given a bouquet of yellow roses. Jackie Kennedy received a bouquet of reds.

The president’s motorcade embarked for downtown. The Connallys sat in the middle row of the uncovered “SS-100-X” Lincoln limousine. The Kennedys sat in the back. Nearly 200,000 Dallas residents came out to cheer the motorcade.

According to the Warren Commission, as the motorcade worked its way to Dealey Plaza (five minutes away from the Trade Mart), Lee Harvey Oswald sat alone in the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. He’d worked there for about five weeks.

Oswald was here on orders from Lehnsherr, the Warren Commission would later conclude.

At just before 12:30 p.m., Kennedy’s motorcade passed the Book Depository. On the ground, the cheers seemed louder than ever. Nellie Connally looked back at Kennedy. “Mr. President, you certainly cannot say that Dallas does not love you,” she said.

What happened next unfolded in less than 3 minutes.

Oswald fired, but missed. He fired again. According to the Warren Commission’s now-famous “bent bullet” theory, this shot passed through Kennedy and Connally, seriously wounding them. Nellie Connally pulled her bleeding husband into her lap.

The third bullet struck Kennedy in the head. The world inside the car went red. A moment later, Jackie was up, frantic, reaching for something on the limousine’s trunk. A Secret Service agent would later say she was probably reaching for a piece of her husband’s head.

"Jack! Jack!" she screamed. "They've killed my husband! I have his brains in my hands!"

The limo sped to Parkland Memorial Hospital. “We were floating in yellow and red roses and blood,” Nellie Connally recalled later. “It was a sea of horror.”