Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

Everyone who was old enough at the time remembers where he or she was when President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed.

The assassination devastated the nation. But the day before the shooting was just a normal day.

It was particularly calm and uneventful for the gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. It was November 21st, 1963, Dallas, dusk. Oswald shows up at a

quiet suburban home where his estranged wife, Marina, is staying. It's Thursday, which makes his visit a surprise.

Marina only wanted to see him on weekends.

The marriage was troubled.

The couple would fight, then make up, fight, then make up.

But on this night, the night before he killed Kennedy,

there is a certain calmness to him.

He doesn't argue with Marina, who has just given birth to their second child.

He is more playful than he has ever been with their two-year-old daughter, Junie,

trying to catch butterflies and falling oak wings out in the yard.

As Norman Mailer put it in his biography of Oswald,

that evening, as the twilight deepened,

it was still warm enough in Texas in November to fool around outside. One can have a sense of final moments the last time we catch Oak Wings together. Everyone sits down for dinner. Of course,

nobody in the kitchen knows what Oswald had planned for the next day.

But Marina certainly knows what her husband was capable of.

She knows Oswald kept a rifle rolled up in a blanket out in the garage.

And she knew who and what her husband despised.

Thank you. and what her husband despised. After dinner, Oswald puts Junie to bed.

Then he returns to the kitchen, asking Marina if she needs help with the dishes.

...