John F. Kennedy
Destiny, hope, and a strategy for peace.
Here is a timeline of John F. Kennedy's life
- 1917 -Born in Brookline, Massachusetts
- 1934 -Admitted into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; and diagnosed with colitis. He will undergo many health-related hardships as he got older.
- 1936 -Enrolls at Harvard College. One of the reasons cited in his application letter noted "Wanting to attend the same college as my father."
- 1939 -Tours Europe, the Soviet Union, the Balkans, and the Middle East in preparation for his Harvard senior honors' thesis. Coincidently, that same year Germany invaded Poland, sparking World War II. Kennedy was sent to the House of Commons as his father’s representative to help with arrangements for American Survivors of SS Athenia.
- 1940 -Completes his thesis, "Appeasement in Munich", about British negotiations during the Munich Agreement.
- 1941 -Although previously rejected from the Armed Forces due to cronic lower-back problems. Joins the United States Naval Reserve with the help from the director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, Alan Kirk.
- 1943 -Commands the PT-109, a patrol boat which was assigned to Motor Torpedo Squadron TWO. His boat came under attack by a Japanese Destroyer. Rescues his crew and keeps them alive by going on supply runs until their eventual rescue 8 days later.
- 1952 -Runs and wins senate race for the state of Massachusetts, against Republican Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
- 1960 -Runs and wins Presidential race against Republican candidate Richard Nixon.
- 1961 -Presidency is dominated by American confrontations with the Soviet Union, in the early stage of the Cold War. Tensions with Nikita Khrushchev began rising going into the Vienna Summit of 1961.
- 1962 -The Cuban Missile Crisis elevates fears of a global nuclear war between the US and Russia. CIA U-2 planes discover the construction of intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba.
- 1963 -With the ongoing War in Vietnam, he comments, "We don't have a prayer of staying in Vietnam. Those people hate us. They are going to throw our asses out of there at any point. But I can't give up that territory to the communists and get the American people to re-elect me."
- 1963 -Dies at the age of 46
"And it's been an incredible legacy but JFK in particular, I think, captured the idealism, the ability to imagine and remake America to meets its ideals, in a way we haven't seen before or since...And I don't know of anyone who has had that same impact on a generation and inspired so many people as JFK has."
-Barack Obama, Former U.S. President