President John F. Kennedy's funeral was held on November 25, 1963, three days after he was assassinated in Dallas. At the conclusion of Kennedy's burial, the military Honor Guard all laid their hats around the burial dome topped with the Eternal Flame, creating an image that no one from that time will forget. To accommodate the crowds of visitors, the gravesite was moved a few years later to a 3.2-acre site with stones paving the grave and a 5-foot circular stone holding the flame.
The hats stayed with the grave for a long time, but no one knows what happened to them. They inspired Jackie Kennedy to commission a permanent memorial sculpture, a project that was managed by her friend Rachel Lambert Mellon, who had designed the White House Rose Garden. The sculpture was designed by Tiffany jeweler Jean Schlumberger to be created by sculptor Louis Féron, and was supposed to be kept secret until its installation. It resembled a wreath of different kinds of wood, rendered in metal, with the military hats. But the memorial sculpture was never installed at the gravesite, and for many years, no one was really sure it was ever produced. That is, until the entire twisted story of the memorial was uncovered, and the sculpture was finally found just this year. We still don't know exactly what went wrong with the plan, but you can read what we now know about Kennedy's memorial sculpture at Smithsonian. -via Strange Company
Commenting on Neatorama will earn you NeatoPoints!