John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in Dallas on 22 November 1963. A decorated PT-boat commander turned Massachusetts senator, he became the youngest elected president and the first Catholic to hold the office. His thousand days in the White House compressed an extraordinary range of crises and initiatives: the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (April 1961), the Berlin Wall confrontation, the thirteen-day Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962) that brought the world closer to nuclear war than any moment before or since, and the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that followed. Domestically he founded the Peace Corps, committed the United States to landing on the Moon by decade's end, and—pushed by the Birmingham campaign—submitted the civil-rights bill that became the 1964 Civil Rights Act. His New Frontier rhetoric and televised composure permanently redefined the modern American presidency.