President Lyndon Johnson , a Texas native, took office under what are now considered to be suspicious circumstances after the assassination of John F Kennedy in Dallas. It is worth noting that nearly everyone involved in the decision making end of the security for this trip was a Texan.

The University of Texas was the site of the United States' first major spree killing in 1966 when Charles Whitman, armed with a sniper's rifle holed up in the bell tower for 96 minutes shooting 45 people, killing 14. No compelling reason has ever been found for this ex-Marine and former Eagle Scout's sudden snap.

During the spring of 1993, agents of the FBI and ATF besieged the compound of the Branch Davidians at Waco, followers of self-proclaimed messiah David Koresh. The siege ended on 19 April when the government forces moved in with tear gas and other weapons, and there followed a fire that killed most of the inhabitants inside the compound. Since then a web of conspiracies has been spun around the incident, helped in no small degree by the fact that new evidence has regularly surfaced contradicting earlier claims made by the FBI.

Texas has its