John F Kennedy

John F Kennedy

JOHN F KENNEDY d1963. The 35th President of the United States between January 20th 1961 to November 22nd 1963 commonly referred to by his initials JFK. He served at the height of the Cold War and much of his presidency focused on managing relations with the Soviet Union. He was a member of the Democratic Party who represented Massachusettes in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate prior to becoming president. He had graduated from Harvard University in 1940, before joining the United States Naval Reserve the following year. During WW2 he commanded a series of PT in the Pacific and earned the Navy & Marine corps Medal for his service. After the war, he represented Massachusettes in the United States House of Representatives from 1947 until 1953. He was subsequently elected to the US Senate and served as the junior Senator from Massachusetts from 1953 until 1960. While serving in the Senate, he published Profiles in Courage which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography. In the 1960 Presidential Campaign he narrowly defeated his Republican opponent Richard Nixon who was the incumbent Vice President. His time in office was marked by high tensions with Communist States in the Cold War. He increased the number of American military advisers in South Vietnam by a factor of 18 over President Dwight D Eisenhower. In April 1961, he authorized a failed joint-CIA attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. He 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, US spy planes discovered that Soviet missile bases had been deployed in Cuba ; the resulting period of tensions, termed the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly resulted in the breakout of a global thermonuclear conflict. Domestically, Kennedy presided over the establishment of the Peace Corps and supported the Civil Rights Movement, but he was largely unsuccessful in passing his New Frontier domestic policies. JFK continues to rank highly in historians polls of US 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. On November 22nd 1963, John F Kennedy was assassinated aged just 46 in Dallas Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the crime, but he was never prosecuted due to his murder by Jack Ruby two days later. Lyndon B Johnson was sworn in as president later that day. The FBI and Warren Commission officially concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin, but various groups believed that Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy ... 

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