Lee Harvey Oswald's unstable upbringing encompassed 22 home addresses and 12 schools by the age of 17. Born in New Orleans on October 18th, 1939, two months after his father died of a heart attack, he was known as a detached, isolated and temperamental child. As a teenager, he often skipped school and showed signs of violent tendencies, his interest in socialist principles underlining his image as an outsider.
After enlisting in the marines at 17, Oswald qualified as a radar operator and was posted to Japan, the Philippines and California, where he stood out for learning Russian and expressing pro-Soviet sentiment at the height of the Cold War.
He obtained an early discharge and, in 1959, headed for Finland where he took a train to Moscow on a tourist visa and tried to defect. Russian authorities rejected his application,al though after a reactionary suicide attempt he was allowed to remain.
Oswald was sent to Minsk to work at an electronics factory and although he enjoyed his novelty status, he eventually grew disenchanted with the dullness of working-class Soviet life. A year after marrying pharmacology student Marina Prusakova (19), he was given permission to return to the US with his wife and baby daughter. Convinced his homecoming would be newsworthy, Oswald prepared answers about his life in Russia only to be dismayed that nobody but his brother greeted him at the airport.
Oswald's frustration at failing to make a significant impression has been cited as a factor in his decision to become a political assassin. In April 1963, after a month of plotting, he allegedly attempted to kill retired US general Edwin Walker, a segregationist and anti-communist, but missed the shot.
In the following months, his erratic behaviour intensified. Oswald moved to New Orleans, stirring up publicity for a Fair Play for Cuba Committee branch that nobody joined. He attempted to convince his pregnant wife to hijack an aircraft and, failing that, travelled to Mexico in an unsuccessful effort to obtain visas from Cuban and Soviet embassies.
Upon his return, he learned of a job opening at the Texas School Book Depository and was hired there on October 16th. Five weeks later, President John F. Kennedy's motorcade would pass by the building, securing the place of Oswald (24) in history.
