John Fitzgerald "
Jack"
Kennedy (May 29, 1917 November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials
JFK, was the
35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until
his assassination in 1963.
After military service as commander of the
Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 and
Motor Torpedo Boat PT-59 during
World War II in the
South Pacific, 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 1953 until 1960. Kennedy defeated then Vice President and Republican candidate
Richard Nixon in the
1960 U.S. presidential election. He was the youngest elected to the office, at the age of 43,
Theodore Roosevelt was 9 months younger when he first assumed the presidency on September 14, 1901, but he was not elected to the presidency until 1904, when he was 46.the second-youngest President (after
Theodore Roosevelt), and the first president to have been born in the 20th century. Kennedy is the only
Catholic president, and is the only president to have won a
Pulitzer Prize. Events during his presidency included the
Bay of Pigs Invasion, the
Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the
Berlin Wall, the
Space Race, the
African American Civil Rights Movement and early stages of the
Vietnam War.
Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in......
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