Historical Figure
John F. Kennedy
1917–1963
President of the United States from 1961 to 1963
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"Inaugural Address" — January 20, 1961
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Biography
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person elected president at 43 years, as well as the first Catholic president. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the United States Congress before his presidency.
Timeline
The story of John F. Kennedy, told in moments.
His patrol torpedo boat, PT-109, is rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer in the Solomon Islands. Two of his 13 crew members die. Kennedy, despite a back injury, tows a badly burned crewman to a nearby island by clenching the man's life vest strap in his teeth. He swims for four hours.
Debates Richard Nixon on live television. 70 million Americans watch. Nixon, recovering from a knee infection and refusing makeup, appears pale and sweating. Kennedy looks tanned and relaxed. Radio listeners think Nixon won. Television viewers disagree. It is the first time a presidential election turns on how candidates look.
Inaugurated as the 35th president. At 43, the youngest elected president. The first Catholic. The temperature in Washington is 22 degrees Fahrenheit. Robert Frost, 86, tries to read a poem but the glare from the snow blinds him. He recites "The Gift Outright" from memory instead.
The Bay of Pigs invasion fails. 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles land at the Bay of Pigs. Castro's forces crush them in three days. 114 killed, 1,189 captured. Kennedy takes full responsibility in public. In private, he tells an advisor: "How could I have been so stupid?"
U-2 spy planes photograph Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida. For thirteen days, Kennedy and Khrushchev negotiate by letter and back-channel while the world holds its breath. Kennedy chooses a naval blockade over an air strike. The missiles are removed. In exchange, the U.S. quietly removes its missiles from Turkey. It is the closest the world has come to nuclear war.
Stands at the Berlin Wall and tells a crowd of 450,000 West Berliners: "Ich bin ein Berliner." The speech is nine minutes long. The crowd erupts. Afterwards, he tells an aide: "We'll never have another day like this one, as long as we live." He has five months to live.
Shot while riding in an open motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas at 12:30 p.m. The first bullet strikes his upper back and exits through his throat. The second hits him in the head. He is pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital at 1:00 p.m. He is 46. Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested 80 minutes later. Jack Ruby shoots Oswald dead two days later on live television.
Neil Armstrong walks on the moon. In May 1961, Kennedy had told Congress: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." The decade has 163 days left. A plaque on the lunar lander reads: "We came in peace for all mankind."
In Their Own Words (20)
If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president's.
Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy (1966), Chapter 1: Lancer to Wayside, page 1, 1966
All my life I've known better than to depend on the experts. How could I have been so stupid, to let them go ahead?
Conversation with Theodore C. Sorensen concerning the Bay of Pigs Invasion; as quoted in Sorensen's Kennedy (1965), p. 309., 1965
Whether I serve one or two terms in the Presidency, I will find myself at the end of that period at what might be called the awkward age — too old to begin a new career and too young to write my memoirs.
Quoted in A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, Arthur Schlesinger (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965), page 1017. According to a footnote in Schlesinger's manuscript (1st draft, page 1378), this was stated on February 13, 1961., 1965
I'm always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics, whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.
Quoted in Bill Adler, "The Presidency," The Wit of President Kennedy (1964)., 1964
The Federal Budget can and should be made an instrument of prosperity and stability, not a deterrent to recovery.
"Special message to Congress: Program for Economic Recovery and Growth (17)", (2 February 1961), 1961
Artifacts (15)
Portrait Miniature of a Man, said to be Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset
Hoskins, John (I)
Text of Telegram Addressed to the Honorable John F. Kennedy on April 19, 1962
Records of this digital collection were assembled to document the work of the UN Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary established on January 10, 1957 by the United Nations General Assembly for...
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