JFK Born: America's Youngest Elected President

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917, the second of nine children in an Irish-Catholic family of immense wealth and fierce political ambition. His father, Joseph Kennedy Sr., had made a fortune in banking, liquor distribution, and Hollywood and openly groomed his sons for public life, originally designating the eldest, Joe Jr., for the presidency. Joe Jr. was killed in a World War II bombing mission in 1944, and the mantle passed to John, who had spent much of his youth in and out of hospitals with chronic illnesses so severe that he received last rites at least twice before his twenty-first birthday. He served in the Navy during the war, commanding PT-109 in the Solomon Islands, and his actions after the boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer made him a war hero. He entered Congress in 1946, won a Senate seat in 1952, and published Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957 amid persistent questions about how much of it he had actually written. He was elected the thirty-fifth President of the United States in 1960 at age forty-three, the youngest person elected to the office and the first Catholic. His presidency lasted 1,037 days. He navigated the Cuban Missile Crisis, established the Peace Corps, launched the space race, and was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. He was forty-six years old. The Zapruder film, twenty-six seconds of amateur footage capturing the motorcade, became the most analyzed piece of film in American history.