President John F. Kennedy at Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

President John F. Kennedy addresses crowd, and initiates groundbreaking of the N-Reactor at the
Hanford Nuclear Reservation, Richland, Washington, September 26, 1963, two month before he was assassinated.

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News & Politics

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• JFK
• Colour
• Footage

[uruguayotrucho]

@uruguayotrucho

the speech was actually longer than recorded on this video, reading the online text it seems that it was perhaps a speech of 7-8 minutes

[uruguayotrucho]

So as the instrument begins to pick up radiation Tate comments on the clicking noise and says that the geiger counter is picking up the "background clicking from the 'normal' radiation which is present in the atmosphere, cosmic rays, and so on...". Little did he know (or maybe he did know, and that would be worse) that we were all standing on one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in the world at that time. I read later that the cows in the area gave us radiated milk.

[uruguayotrucho]

What is almost hilarious about this film is the use of a piece of uranium and a geiger counter to initiate the closing of an electrical relay which starts a huge crane dumping the first dirt of the foundation for the electrical plant. As Dr. Joel Tate hands Kennedy a wand or pointer with a piece of uranium attached to its tip, with which Kennedy will activate the geiger counter, Tate says that he hopes all will be able to hear the clicking of the geiger counter.

[uruguayotrucho]

2) from my close-up view it was the first time I ever saw a man with makeup (for the cameras), from further away you couldn't tell he had it on, but from where I stood it looked almost like a mask.

[uruguayotrucho]

I was there that day with two of my brothers and our Dad. We lived in Sunnyside, WA then, about 35 miles west of the Hanford Project, as the crow flies. I got up so close to the stand that I was almost looking straight up at the President. I remember two reactions I had at the time:

1) I was mesmerized by his speech, I can't remember at all that he said, but it seemed that he only talked for a minute, when his remarks took almost 4 minutes.

(continued in next post)

[knnrepp]

This was too cool to see this . I was there only eight but there none the less. I do remember seeing Kennedy who was about 25" away. awesome.

[mattandpatti222]

Jesuits had him killed! He put the people above the Catholic Church.

[SunCelticSea]

One month before died his son Patrick :(