1. Resume
    1. 1941 - 1945: Military Service - World War II
    2. 1947 - 1953: Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts 11th district
    3. 1953 - 1960: United States Senator from Massachusetts
    4. 1961 - 1963: 35th President of the United States
  2. Chronology
    1. 1917: Born in Brookline, Massachusetts
    2. 1927: Family moved to Bronx, New York City
    3. 1934: Diagnosed with colitis
    4. 1935: Graduated from Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut
    5. 1936: Enrolled at Harvard College
    6. 1938: Sailed overseas with his father and brother to work with his father, who was then FDR's U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, at the American embassy in London
    7. 1939: Toured Europe, the Soviet Union, the Balkans, and the Middle East in preparation for his Harvard senior honors thesis
    8. 1939: Made the Dean's List at Harvard
    9. 1940: Graduated from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Science cum laude in international affairs
    10. 1941: Joined the U.S. Navy
    11. 1943: Towed a wounded man to the island, and later to a second island, from where his crew was rescued after being rammed by a Japanese destroyer
    12. 1944: Older brother, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., was killed in action
    13. 1946: Joe Kennedy urged U.S. Representative James Michael Curley to become mayor of Boston, Kennedy ran and beat his Republican opponent for the vacated seat
    14. 1952: Defeated Republican Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. for the U.S. Senate seat
    15. 1953: Married to Jacqueline
    16. 1953 - 1955: Underwent several spinal operations
    17. 1957: Received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography with his "Profiles in Courage"
    18. 1960: Appeared with Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the first televised U.S. presidential debates in U.S. history
    19. 1961: Inauguration - one of first acts was having the Congress create the Peace Corps
    20. 1961: Stated an attack on West Berlin with the U.S.S.R. would be taken as an attack on the U.S. - the Berlin Wall was built
    21. 1961: Agreed to a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, with limited signing in 1963 by the US, UK, and USSR, although France continued to develop nuclear arms
    22. 1961: Ordered the Bay of Pigs Invasion: 1,500 U.S.-trained Cubans landed on the island, which ended in defeat and the release of the 1,189 survivors for $53 million worth of food and medicine
    23. 1961: First announced the goal of landing a man on the Moon
    24. 1962: Offensive missiles were being built in Cuba by the Soviets, which feared nuclear war with the U.S.S.R. - U.S. publicly promised never to invade Cuba and privately agreed to remove its missiles in Turkey
    25. 1962: Announced, in a speech at Rice University, that "we choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
    26. 1963: Equal Pay Act
    27. 1963: Assassinated while on a political trip to Texas - he was shot once in the throat, once in the upper back, with the fatal shot hitting him in the head
    28. 1964: His proposals became part of the Civil Rights Act
  3. Notables
    1. Youngest to have been elected to office, the second-youngest President (after Theodore Roosevelt), and the first person born in the 20th century to serve as president
    2. Only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize
    3. Voted the "most likely to succeed."
    4. Won the 1960 election with a national popular vote of 49.7% to 49.5% and 303 votes to Nixon's 219 in the Electoral College
    5. "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
    6. His approval rating increased from 66% to 77% after the Cuban Missile Crisis
    7. Kennedy was strongly considering pulling out of Vietnam after the 1964 election, he knew it was a lost cause
    8. Credited as the founder of the US-Israeli military alliance
    9. Economy prospered during the Kennedy administration
    10. Verbally supported racial integration and civil rights
    11. The first of six Presidents to have served in the U.S. Navy
  4. Laws / Acts / Events
    1. Bay of Pigs Invasion
    2. Cuban Missile Crisis
    3. Building of the Berlin Wall
    4. Space Race
    5. African-American Civil Rights Movement
    6. Early stages of the Vietnam War
    7. Creation of Peace Corps
    8. Eisenhower considered Laos to be "the cork in the bottle" in regards to communist threat, but Kennedy deemed Vietnam as the tripwire for communism's spread in the area
    9. 1962: Signed into law HR5143, abolishing the mandatory death penalty for first degree murder in the District of Columbia
    10. 1963 Equal Pay Act, a federal law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex
    11. 1964 Civil Rights Act
    12. 1965: Immigration and Nationality Act came to fruition after his proposed overhaul of American immigration policy
    13. 1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space
    14. Administration created the Navy SEALs, which Kennedy enthusiastically supported