June 5, 1968: Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated.
Five years after the assassination of his older brother in 1963, Robert Kennedy was himself gunned down in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles shortly after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. Kennedy’s assassin was one Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Christian who, according to his personal journals, held every American politician who expressed support for Israel in contempt but reserved a particular hatred for Senator Kennedy.
Because of what Sirhan perceived as Kennedy’s betrayal of the “underdog”, he obsessively planned to murder him on or before the eve of the first anniversary of the Six Day War, June 5, 1968. That evening, Sirhan smuggled a revolver into the hotel, followed Kennedy and his three security guards into the hotel’s kitchen and pantry area, and shot the senator several times (and injured five other people) as he shook hands with Juan Romero, a busboy who appears alongside Kennedy in the iconic photograph of the assassination (pictured above). Romero reportedly handed Kennedy a crucifix and told him “everything is going to be okay”. Unlike his brother, who had been shot in such a way that he had no chance of survival upon his arrival at the hospital, Robert Kennedy underwent extensive surgery for his wounds, remained in critical condition for the remainder of his hospital stay, and died over a day after the shooting. He was forty-two, and one of only two sitting senators to be assassinated in U.S. history.