-
Born
-
navy service
Kennedy tried to enlist in the army in 1941, but he was rejected because of a back injury he had sustained while playing football at Harvard. As a result of his father's influence, he managed to enlist in the navy. In 1943, after the PT boat he was commanding was sunk by a Japanese destroyer, he heroically saved the life of one of his crew members. In the process, however, he aggravated his back ailment and contracted—and almost died from—malaria. Painful complications from his war injuries plag -
beging
Back from the war, he became a Democratic Congressman from the Boston area, advancing in 1953 to the Senate. He married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953. In 1955, while recuperating from a back operation, he wrote Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history. -
cubin misisle crisis
Instead, the Russians now sought to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. When this was discovered by air reconnaissance in October 1962, Kennedy imposed a quarantine on all offensive weapons bound for Cuba. While the world trembled on the brink of nuclear war, the Russians backed down and agreed to take the missiles away. The American response to the Cuban crisis evidently persuaded Moscow of the futility of nuclear blackmail. Kennedy now contended that both sides had a vital interest in stopping -
going into office
In 1960, when he was elected president, Kennedy had the support of an estimated 80 percent of Jewish voters. As president he demonstrated friendship for Israel by tripling the amount of American financial assistance to Israel and by selling the country ground-to-air Hawk missiles in 1962 for protection against air attack. He alerted the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean when subversion in Jordan by the United Arab Republic threatened to undermine the stability of the entire area. He increase -
spechees
At American University on 10 June 1963, he gave one of the most important speeches of his presidency; it marked the beginning of a spirit of détente. Kennedy called for a reexamination of American attitudes toward the Soviet Union and said that both sides in the Cold War had "a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race