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General Category => Huh? => Topic started by: Ct Yankee on March 16, 2018, 2131 UTC
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New York City's St. Patrick's Day Parade is always on March 17, unless it falls on a Sunday - then it is held on Saturday, March 16, in deference to St. Patrick's Cathedral on the parade route. The turbulent year of 1968 was such a year the parade was on the 16th. My first generation Irish teenage babysitter had asked my parents if she could take me (age 11) on the subway from our Queens neighborhood to Manhattan to watch the parade, permission was granted.
Little did we know that while traveling to the parade as straphangers, Grand Marshall NY Senator Robert F. Kennedy announced he was running for President. This was very late in the game as the election was less than eight months away. RFK treated the parade like a campaign swing, perhaps the slowest parade is history, shaking thousands of hands as he "marched' - mine included. Two and a half months later he would be dead.
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/senator-robert-f-kennedy-is-greeted-by-supporters-as-he-news-photo/515536046#/senator-robert-f-kennedy-is-greeted-by-supporters-as-he-marches-in-picture-id515536046
(I am not in said photo but it is a good representation of the blocks of handshaking he did.)