Wednesday, July 13, 2016

John F. Kennedy's - Future



John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. The Cuban Missile Crisis, The Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the establishment of the Peace Corps, developments in the Space Race, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Trade Expansion Act to lower tariffs, and the Civil Rights Movement. His "New Frontier" domestic program was largely enacted as a memorial to him after his death. Kennedy increased the American presence in South Vietnam by a factor of 18 over Eisenhower, as to the number of military advisors and tolerated the assassination of the president there.
Kennedy's time in office was marked by high tensions with Communist states, particularly Cuba. An attempt in April 1961 at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow the country's dictator, Fidel Castro, was thwarted by armed forces within three days. His administration subsequently rejected plans by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to orchestrate false-flag attacks on American soil in order to gain public approval for a war against Cuba. In October 1962, it was discovered Soviet ballistic missiles had been deployed in Cuba; the resulting period of unease, often termed the Cuban Missile Crisis, is seen by many historians as the closest the human race has ever come to war featuring the use of nuclear weapons on both or multiple sides.
After military service in the United States Naval Reserve in World War II, Kennedy represented Massachusetts's 11th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat. Thereafter, he served in the U.S. Senate from that state from 1953 until 1960. Kennedy defeated Vice President and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. Presidential Election. At age 43, he was the youngest man to have been elected to the office, the second-youngest president (after Theodore Roosevelt, who was 42 when he became president after the assassination of William McKinley). Kennedy was the first person born in the 20th century to serve as president. To date, Kennedy has been the only Roman Catholic president and the only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize, for his biography Profiles in Courage.
Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested that afternoon and determined to have fired shots that hit the President from a sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby mortally wounded Oswald two days later in a jail corridor. The FBI and the Warren Commission officially concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin, but its report was sharply criticized. The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with the conclusion that Oswald fired the shots that killed the president, but also concluded that Kennedy was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy. The majority of Americans alive at the time of the assassination: 52% to 29%, and continuing through 2013 (61% to 30%), believed both that there was a conspiracy, and that Oswald was not the only shooter.
Since the 1960s, information concerning Kennedy's private life has come to light. Details of Kennedy's health problems with which he struggled have become better known, especially since the 1990s. Although initially kept secret from the general public, reports of Kennedy being unfaithful in marriage have garnered press. Kennedy ranks highly in historians' polls of U.S. presidents, and with the general public. His average approval rating of 70% is the highest of any president in Gallup's history of systematically measuring job approval.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917,[8] to businessman/politician Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy, Sr. (1888–1969) and philanthropist/socialite Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald-Kennedy (1890–1995). His father was the oldest son of businessman/politician Patrick Joseph "P. J." Kennedy (1858–1929) and Mary Augusta Hickey-Kennedy (1857–1923). His mother was the daughter of Boston Mayor John Francis "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald (1863–1950) and Mary Josephine "Josie" Hannon-Fitzgerald (1865–1964). All four of his grandparents were the children of immigrants from Ireland.
His brothers were Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy, Jr. (1915–1944), Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy (1925–1968), and Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (1932–2009). Joseph Jr. was killed in action during World War II. Robert was JFK's attorney general and then a senator who was assassinated in 1968; Ted was a long-serving U.S. senator from 1962 until his death from brain cancer in 2009. His sisters were Rose Marie "Rosemary" Kennedy (1918–2005), Kathleen Agnes "Kick" Kennedy (1920–1948), Eunice Mary Kennedy (1921–2009), Patricia Helen "Pat" Kennedy (1924–2006), and Jean Ann Kennedy (born 1928).
Kennedy lived in Brookline for ten years and attended the Edward Devotion School, the Noble and Greenough Lower School, and the Dexter School through 4th grade. In 1927, the Kennedy family moved to a stately twenty-room Georgian-style mansion at 5040 Independence Avenue (across the street from Wave Hill) in the Hudson Hill neighborhood of Riverdale, Bronx, New York City. Kennedy attended the lower campus of Riverdale Country School, a private school for boys, from 5th to 7th grade. Two years later, the family moved to 294 Pondfield Road in the New York City suburb of Bronxville, New York, where Kennedy was a member of Scout Troop 2.[1] The Kennedy family spent summers at their home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts and Christmas and Easter holidays at their winter home in Palm Beach, Florida. In September 1930, Kennedy—now 13 years old—attended the Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. In late April 1931, he required an appendectomy, after which he withdrew from Canterbury and recuperated at home.
In September 1931, Kennedy was sent to the The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut for 9th through 12th grade. His older brother had already been at Choate for two years as a football player and leading student. He spent his first years at Choate in his older brother's shadow, and compensated for this with rebellious behavior which attracted a coterie. Their most notorious stunt was to explode a toilet seat with a powerful firecracker. In the ensuing chapel assembly, the strict headmaster George St. John brandished the toilet seat and spoke of certain "muckers" who would "spit in our sea". The defiant Kennedy took the cue and named his group "The Muckers Club", which included roommate and friend Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings.
During his Choate years, Kennedy was beset by health problems that culminated in 1934 with his emergency hospitalization at New Haven Hospital, where doctors thought he might have leukemia. In June 1934, he was admitted to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, the ultimate diagnosis there was colitis. Kennedy graduated from Choate in June of the following year. For the school yearbook, of which he had been business manager, Kennedy was voted the "most likely to succeed".
In September 1935, he made his first trip abroad with his parents and his sister Kathleen to London with the intent of studying under Harold Laski at the London School of Economics (LSE) as his older brother had done. Ill-health forced his return to America in October of that year, when he enrolled late and spent six weeks at Princeton University. He was then hospitalized for observation at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. He convalesced further at the Kennedy winter home in Palm Beach, then spent the spring of 1936 working as a ranch hand on the 40,000-acre (160 km2) "Jay Six" cattle ranch outside Benson, Arizona. It is reported that ranchman Jack Speiden worked both brothers "very hard".
In September 1936, Kennedy enrolled at Harvard College, where he produced that year's annual "Freshman Smoker", called by a reviewer "an elaborate entertainment, which included in its cast outstanding personalities of the radio, screen and sports world". He tried out for the football, golf, and swimming teams and earned a spot on the varsity swimming team. Kennedy also sailed in the Star class and won the 1936 Nantucket Sound Star Championship. In July 1937, Kennedy sailed to France—bringing his convertible—and spent ten weeks driving through Europe with Billings.[17] In June 1938, Kennedy sailed overseas with his father and older brother to work at the American embassy in London, where his father was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's.
In 1939, Kennedy toured Europe, the Soviet Union, the Balkans, and the Middle East in preparation for his Harvard senior honors thesis. He then went to Czechoslovakia and Germany before returning to London on September 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, the family was in the House of Commons for speeches endorsing the United Kingdom's declaration of war on Germany. Kennedy was sent as his father's representative to help with arrangements for American survivors of the SS Athenia before flying back to the U.S. from Foynes, Ireland to Port Washington, New York on his first transatlantic flight.
As an upperclassman at Harvard, Kennedy became a more serious student and developed an interest in political philosophy. In his junior year, he made the Dean's List. In 1940, Kennedy completed his thesis, "Appeasement in Munich", about British participation in the Munich Agreement. The thesis became a bestseller under the title Why England Slept. He graduated from Harvard College cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in government, concentrating on international affairs, that year. Kennedy enrolled in and audited classes at the Stanford Graduate School of Business that fall. In early 1941, Kennedy left and helped his father write a memoir of his three years as an American ambassador and then traveled throughout South America; including Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
On September 12, 1953, Kennedy, then thirty-six, married 24-year-old Jacqueline Bouvier at St. Mary's Church in Newport, Rhode Island after a one-year courtship.

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