On this day 50 years ago…

PIC: US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. at the "March on Washington" in August 1963 where he delivered his celebrated "I Have a Dream" speech. (Credit: AFP)

TODAY IN HISTORY

April 4, 1968

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed while standing on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Suspected gunman James Earl Ray later pleaded guilty to assassinating King, then spent the rest of his life claiming he had been the victim of a setup.