John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy served as the 35th President of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963, navigating the Cuban Missile Crisis and launching the American effort to land astronauts on the Moon.
Barely three years into his presidency, a thirteen-day standoff over Soviet missiles in Cuba brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any point before or since.
The Youngest Elected President
Kennedy became the youngest person ever elected U.S. president at age 43, bringing a sense of youthful energy and optimism to the White House that became closely associated with his brief but historically significant administration.
An Early Setback in Cuba
Kennedy's administration faced an early foreign policy setback with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, a covert operation aimed at overthrowing Fidel Castro that ended in embarrassing failure for the new administration.
Thirteen Days That Shook the World
In October 1962, Kennedy navigated the tense Cuban Missile Crisis, a 13-day standoff with the Soviet Union over the discovery of nuclear missiles in Cuba that brought the world dangerously close to nuclear war before being resolved through careful diplomacy.
Reaching for the Moon
Kennedy committed the United States to the ambitious goal of landing astronauts on the Moon before the end of the 1960s, a target achieved by NASA's Apollo 11 mission in 1969, six years after his death.
A Nation Shocked
Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, an event that remains one of the most extensively examined and debated in American history, and one that profoundly shaped the nation's collective memory of the era.
