Today marks the 50^th anniversary of two things that changed the world.

On this date a half century ago events on two continents made the world seem both larger and smaller at the same time.

I am referring to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the premiere of the British television show Doctor Who.

Now, to be fair I was not alive 50 years ago on the day that changed everything; having arrived on the scene a little bit after that.

But, as a student of history and an avid Whovian I feel fairly confident in assessing the impact that both events had on the world in general.

And one does not need to have been alive on that fateful November day to feel the impacts of those two events.

So let us start with President Kennedy whose assassination on a Dallas street around four hours from where I am writing this changed the face of politics and gave breath to a whole industry of conspiracy theories as to what happened.

While I suppose one can argue for both the lone gunmen theory of a single shooter versus multiple shooters that does not really change the fact that a President of the United States was slain and with it a part of the innocence of the nation was slain with it.

President Kennedy was not the first president to be assassinated. In fact William McKinley, the 25th U.S. President, was killed in 1901. So it stands to reason that there were people alive in 1963 who were alive the last time a president was killed.

But for many younger Americans they had never witnessed the death of a president, let alone one as popular as JFK.

Individuals tried to assassinate both Presidents Ford and Reagan and I would like to believe that lessons learned from the Kennedy assassination helped protect both of those men from being killed.

While I was not alive to have the