Why Oswald Tried Another Killing Before JFK

President Kennedy wasn't the only target on Lee Harvey Oswald's list: Before JFK's death, Oswald took aim at a strident anti-Communist general and missed. A new book, Dallas 1963, looks back at how Gen. Edwin Walker's barnstorming tour across the South and Oswald's rising political rage collided mere months before JFK's assassination, the Smithsonian reports. Three days after Walker gave a speech calling for Kennedy to "liquidate that scourge that has descended upon the island of Cuba," an enraged Oswald sneaked over to Walker's house with a rifle. The Daily Beast runs an excerpt from the book:

• "Drawing a tight bead on Walker’s head, he pulls the trigger. An explosion hurtles through the night, a thunder that echoes to the alley, to the creek, to the church and the surrounding houses. Walker flinches instinctively at the loud blast and the sound of a wicked crack over his scalp—right inside his hair. For a second, he is frozen. His right arm is still resting on the desk alongside his 1962 income tax forms. He doesn’t know it, but blood is beginning to appear."

A detective on the scene later says, "He couldn’t have missed you." Replies Walker: "He must have been a lousy shot." Click for the full excerpt. (More Lee Harvey Oswald stories.)