But there is another name that you have likely never heard: a man who might have changed history as drastically and irrevocably as Oswald did. Kennedy was elected in November 1960; a month later, this man came very close to making sure that Kennedy never served a single day in office.  His name was Richard Pavlick.  From an Associated Press dispatch, December 16, 1960, dateline West Palm Beach, Florida:  "A craggy-faced retired postal clerk who said he didn't like the way John F. Kennedy won the election is in jail on charges he planned to kill the president-elect.  "Richard Pavlick, 73, was charged by the Secret Service with planning to make himself a human bomb and blow up Kennedy and himself."  Pavlick came much closer to killing Kennedy than most news reporters realized at the time. He was arrested in Palm Beach on December 15, 1960, in a car loaded with sticks of dynamite. Kennedy; his wife, Jacqueline; his daughter, Caroline; and his son, John Jr., were staying in the Kennedy family mansion in Palm Beach, preparing for the inauguration the next month.  Because Pavlick didn't get near Kennedy on the day he was arrested, the story was not huge national news. The announcement of his arrest coincided with a terrible airline disaster in which two commercial planes collided over New York City, killing 134 people, and that was the story that received the banner headlines and led the television and radio newscasts.  It wasn't until later that the complete story of a first Pavlick assassination attempt, a few days earlier, began to get out. It was that first one that might have changed American history.
In a few weeks a noteworthy anniversary will arrive: fifty years since the election of John F. Kennedy as president of the United States.Much will be made of the fact that half a century has passed.