Films have been made, books have been written and learned scholars have debated at great length details about the assassination.
At the height of John F. Kennedy's power, the Kennedy family was akin to the Royal Family in Great Britain. Camelot was the popular term to describe the court in which Mr Kennedy held sway. His younger brother Robert was due to stand for the presidency when he too was killed.
Images of a young John F. Kennedy jun saluting the coffin of his father will remain embedded in the minds of more than one generation.
Thousands of documents relating to the JFK shooting were released late last week from the National Archives. They were meant to be the last of the Government's secret file on the assassination.
US President Donald Trump blocked the release of hundreds of records at the last minute, agreeing to CIA and FBI appeals. But the National Archives turned over about 2800 other records. Mr Trump placed the blocked files under a six-month review, meeting a deadline to honour a law mandating their release.
Officials say Mr Trump will impress upon federal agencies only in the rarest cases should JFK files stay secret after the six-month review.
One of the first interesting documents to be unearthed as journalists, scholars and the public pored over them, was a memo written by director J Edgar Hoover saying the FBI had warning of a potential death threat to Lee Harvey Oswald.
``Last night we received a call in our Dallas office from a man talking in a calm voice and saying he was a member of a committee organised to kill Oswald,'' Mr Hoover wrote.
Jack Ruby did later shoot Lee Harvey Oswald and despite the FBI sending agents to Oswald's death bed, hoping for a confession, nothing new was revealed.
Once the thousands of new documents have been fully analysed by researchers, which will take weeks, the collection is expected to provide background information to help build a more complete picture of known events and individuals, rather than offer any stunning twists in the tale. A second gunman is long a favourite theory among those who do not believe Oswald shot Mr Kennedy as the presidential motorcade travelled past the Texas School Book Depository in downtown Dallas on the afternoon of November 22, 1963.
Oswald, a former US marine who spent more than two years living in Minsk after defecting to the Soviet Union in 1959, travelled to Mexico City about two months before he killed Mr Kennedy. Researchers are hoping the documents shed light on possible interactions with Cuban and Russian officials there. The Warren Commission found in 1964 Oswald was the lone gunman, but most Americans doubt the official line.
The Kennedy family line has been beset by trouble. JFK was not meant to be the president. The honour was set for his older brother Joseph P. Kennedy jun who was killed in a war-time aviation accident. The perseverance of patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy meant JFK was elected president. The family endured more than their share of suffering throughout generations. At once stage, Ted Kennedy openly wondered if there was a Kennedy curse.
Whatever the latest documents reveal, there will always be people with their own versions of the grassy knoll and the shooting.
Favourite theories included the involvement of the Mafia, the federal government in general, the CIA, and Cuba under Fidel Castro.
Holding back some of the files will fuel suspicion there is a smoking gun on the assassination and the theories will continue. However, the ongoing release of files on the investigation into one of the most tragic events in American history is another step towards final closure.
