John F. Kennedy
1917–1963 2 entries
Biography
John F. Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States, in office from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. Born in Massachusetts into a wealthy political family, he studied at Harvard and served in the Navy in the Second World War, where he was decorated for saving his crew after their torpedo boat was sunk. He was elected to the House of Representatives and then to the Senate, and his book Profiles in Courage won the Pulitzer Prize. In 1960, at forty-three, he became the youngest person ever elected president.
His presidency saw the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world came close to nuclear war. He set the goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade, founded the Peace Corps and proposed the civil rights law that was passed after his death. On 22 November 1963 he was shot dead in Dallas, Texas, while riding through the city in an open car.
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