On This Day: Bobby Kennedy buried beside brother JFK after second assassination

JUNE 8, 1968: Bobby Kennedy was buried beside his brother President John F Kennedy on this day in 1968 after the second assassination in America’s biggest political dynasty.

The senator, 42, was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles while campaigning emulate his older sibling, who was killed five years before.

A British Pathé newsreel shows thousands of mourners filing past his coffin while it lay in state at St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

At his funeral, which President Lyndon Johnson and Republican rival Richard Nixon were shown attending, the youngest Kennedy brother Ted gave a memorable eulogy.

He said: 'My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

'Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

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'As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: ‘Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.’'

Afterwards, his coffin was sent to Washington by train. During the journey two spectators standing on a nearby track were hit by another locomotive.

Due to the delay, the body of RFK, as he was also known, did not arrive at Arlington National Cemetery, which is a hallowed place for war heroes, until after 9pm.

It was dark when his eldest son Joe P Kennedy II, one of 11 children, led the pallbearers in taking the coffin to its burial place.

He was laid to rest beside JFK, who was also served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, as his wife Ethel looked on tearfully.

Despite being overlooked by his father Joe, who had groomed his eldest sons Joseph Jr and JFK for greatness, Bobby showed tremendous tenacity and ambition himself.

Yet he was extremely loyal to John, who would become his father’s focus after Joseph Jr died in the war, and campaigned vigorously for him.

Many credit RFK’s organisation and hard work for helping JFK win the 1960 election and become America’s first ever Catholic president.

He was rewarded with the post of Attorney General in his brother’s administration.

He went on to carve out a career that saw him become an icon of modern American liberalism and almost became the most left-wing presidential candidate in history.

Had he survived was tipped to beat Republican candidate and eventual winner Richard Nixon in the November 1968 general election.

Mourners gather for the funeral procession in New York. (Rex)

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The Democrat had just won the important California primary when he was shot and was tipped to receive backing in the majority of other states too.

Palestinian-born Sirhan Sirhan, who is now aged 70 and still in jail for the crime, fired on Kennedy when he walked through the kitchen on his way to a press conference.

He is said to have shot him over RFK’s support for Israel and timed the assassination to fall on the first anniversary of the start of the 1967 Six Day War.

However, Sirhan has long denied killing him and, just like JFK’s death, there have been a host of conspiracy theories.

These include CIA involvement and claims of a second gunman.