Mar 10, 2020 - Sale 2533

Sale 2533 - Lot 196

Unsold
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(PRESIDENTS--1968 CAMPAIGN.) UPI teletype printout regarding the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Several hundred slips in one box, 8 1/2 inches wide and of varying lengths up to about 16 inches, most of them corner-stapled together into 33 packets in chronological order; light toning, some fading, moderate wear at edges. Vp, 4 to 9 June 1968

Additional Details

This packet of teletype printouts begins at 11:07 p.m. on the night of 4 June 1968. It was a busier than average news night as the returns from the California presidential primary were coming in. A report just past midnight at 12:07 had Robert F. Kennedy trailing in the early returns, and apparently the teletype was turned off for the evening at that point. It reads "Good-night all, WCNS 6/4." Eight minutes later, Kennedy was shot in the head at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The operator of this teletype must have heard the news on the radio, and turned it back on at 12:55. The print-out resumes halfway through an early report: "the floor of the hotel kitchen. Aides quickly blocked the entrance to the room where the Senator was lying. Someone stepped to a microphone and called 'Any doctors here?'" This followed by four continuous days of printouts including a steady barrage of updates on the shooting, the senator's death 26 hours later, the identification of the assassin Sirhan Sirhan, the funeral, and the potential effects on the 1968 presidential election.