April 17: On This Day in World History … briefly
Sirhan never became an American citizen, retaining instead his Jordanian citizenship. As an adult, he changed church denominations several times, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches and then in 1966, he joined the occult organisation Ancient Mystical Order of the Rose Cross, commonly known as the Rosicrucians.
1969: Kennedy’s assassin is convicted
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, the Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship who shot United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968; Kennedy died the following day. Sirhan was convicted of murder and is serving a life sentence at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County, California.
Sirhan was born in Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine to an Arab Christian, and he attended a Lutheran school. In 1989, he told David Frost:
“My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 (fighter jet) bombers to Israel to obviously do harm to Palestinians.”
Some scholars believe that the assassination was the first major incident of political violence in the United States stemming from the Arab–Israeli conflict in the Middle East
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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