John F. Kennedy

The youngest ever president of the United States and the first Catholic in the White House, for many John F. Kennedy was a symbolic figure of youth and idealism.

Kennedy came from a large, wealthy Boston family with Irish roots. He graduated from Harvard and joined the Navy in 1941, working as a torpedo boat commander in World War II. He went on to serve as a Democrat, first in the House of Representatives, from 1947-52, and then as a senator, from 1953-60, for the state of Massachusetts .

In 1960 he defeated Richard Nixon from his presidency in one of the closest political contests in history. His short term as a president was a period of energy and optimism in the US . He launched a space program, and his “New Frontier” in social legislation proposed broader welfare, desegregation, and civil rights reform. Abroad, he intensified US intervention in Vietnam , but weathered the Cuban Missile Crisis, and worked to dispel the Cold War tension.

Charming and popular, the US , and indeed the whole world, was devastated when he was killed by an assassin in Dallas , Texas .   [UP]