Black Jack in JFK funeral procession, Nov. 25, 1963.

Grave of Black Jack, the Riderless Horse

Fort Myer, Virginia

There have been other riderless horses -- they're a traditional part of military full honor funerals -- but none was as famous a Black Jack. He was the "riderless horse" with the boots reversed in the stirrups (symbol of a fallen leader) in President John F. Kennedy's 1963 funeral procession.

It was standard procedure for Black Jack; he had been the riderless horse in thousands of other military funerals, and even lived long enough to perform the same role in the funeral of JFK's successor, President Johnson. But the Kennedy funeral is the one that made him famous, and when he died in 1976 he became only the second horse in U.S. history to be buried with Full Military Honors. The other was Comanche, the lone cavalry survivor of Little Big Horn.