JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY
A brief timeline
JFK timeline:
- 1941 JFK commissioned U.S. Navy ensign; Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor
- 1943 PT-109 sunk in the Pacific
- 1946 Elected to U.S. House of Representatives (Massachusetts)
- 1952 Elected to U.S. Senate (Massachusetts)
- 1956 Defeated for vice presidential nomination
- 1960 Elected president by extremely narrow margin
- 1961 Announced Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress; Laotian Crisis and military alert; Cuba invaded at Bay of Pigs; U.S. Marshals ordered to Alabama after violence against "Freedom Riders"; Summit meeting with Khrushchev; Berlin Crisis; General Taylor reported U.S. aid could bring military victory in Vietnam
- 1962 JFK forced a rollback on steel prices; U.S. troops used to integrate University of Mississippi; Cuban Missile Crisis; Executive Order signed barring racial discrimination in public housing
- 1963 JFK submitted civil rights bill to Congress; Civil Rights March on Washington; Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratified; Diem of South Vietnam assassinated in military coup; Kennedy assassinated in Dallas, Texas
- 1964 Lyndon Johnson elected president; Robert Kennedy elected to U.S. Senate
His Impact
John (Fitzgerald) Kennedy left a immeasurable imprint on America in latter part of the 20th century, despite being president for only a thousand days, despite a modest record of accomplishments and a penchant for stirring crises, and character flaws revealed only after his death. Remembered less for what he did than what he could have done, JFK was assassinated at the peak of his political power, thus unable to fulfill the high expectations he generated with moving speeches and unmatched personal magnetism and popularity. He endorsed Martin Luther King Jr. and the August 1963 march on Washington. He tried to get congress to pass A civil rights bill, but it failed despite the thousands of supporters. He became a war hero when his ship PT-109 was rammed and sank, he dragged an unconscious crew member to shore with his mouth.
A brief history of JFK:
Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917; assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22,1963; son of Joseph Patrick and Rose (Fitzgerald) Kennedy; brother of Robert Francis Kennedy and Edward Moore Kennedy; married: Jacqueline Bouvier; children: Caroline Bouvier Kennedy, Schlossberg and John F. Kennedy Jr.
Quotes:
"When Kennedy said, 'let's go to the moon', we didn't yet have a vehicle that wouldn't kill you on launch. He said we'll land a man on the moon in eight years and bring him back. That was an audacious goal to put forth in front of the American people." -Neil deGrasse Tyson
"I told them how excited I would be to go into space and how thrilled I was when Alan Shepard made his historic flight, and when John Kennedy announced on the news that the men had landed safely on the moon, and how was I jealous I was of those men." -Crista McAuliffe
"I respect John Kennedy for saying he had a dream that the we'd go to the moon before the end of the decade." -John Catsimitidis
Links:
"John Fitzgerald Kennedy." Historic World Leaders. Ed. Anne Commire. Detroit