Today we decided to go into town and do some sightseeing. First stop: the JFK museum which is on the 6th floor of the School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald was suspected of shooting the President. There are certainly a lot of conspiracy theories on Oswald, Ruby, and others that may or may not have been involved in the shooting, which we found fascinating.
Timeline and facts for the interested: 12:30 JFK is shot; 12:36 JFK arrives at hospital (4 miles away); 1:00 JFK pronounced dead; 2pm JFK removed from hospital in a casket from Oneal Funeral Home at a cost of $3,995 which weighed over 400 pounds (in fact the secret service took the body against local law enforcement direction and before a medical examination could be done, which was apparently illegal in Texas) and was driven to Air Force One. Interestingly the original casket was not what was used for the funeral and was kept by the funeral home that did the embalming for more than a year, as they didn’t know what to do with it. In the meantime the Oneal Funeral Home owner Vernon, was arguing with the U.S. Government over the price tag of the coffin. The government felt it was excessive, but even after Oneal lowered the price, the two sides remained at an impasse. What Oneal really wanted however, was the coffin returned. He was getting offers for more than $100,000 for it – the equivalent of nearly $1 million today. The federal government, to prevent the casket from falling into the hands of the “morbidly curious”, paid Oneal only $3,160, then turned it over to the U.S Air Force, who drilled holes in it, filled it with 80-pound sandbags, crated it, and dropped it into the Atlantic Ocean 100 miles east of Washington D.C., to avoid it becoming a morbid curiosity. President Kennedy, a Navy veteran of WWII, had once considered a burial at sea. While this did not happen, his first casket did make it there.
Here are some pics of the museum.
After the somber tour of the museum, we decided to go for a nice Mexican lunch! Included were a margarita and a sangria….of course.
Next stop: the Dallas World Aquarium!! Something happy and fun to end the day! Lori loves aquariums, with her favourite being the Ripley’s Aquarium in Toronto.
The Dallas World Aquarium entrance, even BEFORE you get to the ticket booth, is amazing! There are all sorts of birds which is something we were surprised to see at an Aquarium, but very beautiful and a great way to occupy time if the wait is long.
We then started our tour of the facility. We discovered that there are many layers/levels of the Orinoco Rainforest which includes the Canopy, the Understory, and then the Aquatic. Then the Mundo Maya, lower level and upper level. While we FINALLY got to some aquariums, this really isn’t just an aquarium tour, it’s much much more. The tour through the canopy, the jungle, and the underwater world was outstanding.
One can’t leave the blog without paying tribute to the Sloth. The Sloth is a sluggish tree-dweller of Central and South America who spends its life in the tropical rain forest, moving through the canopy at a rate of about 40 yards per day, munching on leaves, twigs, and buds. Sloths have an exceptionally low metabolic rate and spend 15 to 20 hours per day sleeping. While we believe in the need to slow down in life………….this is too slow. We watched the sloth over the span of about 4 minutes taking a piece of bamboo (we think) from a handler. Patience is the KEY to working with these guys. We’re sad the pics are not clearer, but the lighting was not ideal in this area. Michelle and Joy, these are for you!!
