John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States. He was the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic ever elected to the presidency. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. He briefly attended Princeton University, and then entered Harvard University in 1936. At Harvard he wrote an honors thesis on British foreign policies in the 1930s. It was published in 1940, the year he graduated, under the title Why England Slept. ("A Biography").
In 1941, shortly before the United States entered World War II, Kennedy joined the U.S. Navy. He attended a school to learn about the Patrol Torpedo boat. Kennedy was sent to the islands of the South Pacific Ocean where he was in charge of a Torpedo boat named the PT 109. While in charge of the PT 109, Kennedy's boat had been destroyed in one battle by a single torpedo. Kennedy spent 3 weeks in a hospital after surviving the torpedo attack and worked on a book of biographical studies of American political heroes. The book was published in 1956 under the title Profiles in Courage; it won a Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957. ("A Biography").
On September 12, 1953, Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier. The couple had three children: Caroline Bouvier, John Fitzgerald Junior, and a second son who died at birth in August 1963. In 1956, Kennedy tried unsuccessfully for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination. After that, he set his sights on the presidency, especially after his re-election to the Senate in 1958. By 1960, Kennedy was one of many Democratic nominees" for president. He put together a well-financed and highly organized campaign and won on the first ballot. Kennedy also performed well in a series of television debates with his Republican opponent; Vice-President Richard M. Nixon. Kennedy won the election for presidency, but by a very narrow margin. ("A Biography").
Kennedy had a string of accomplishments while being president such as being the founder of the Peace Corps and preventing the Cuban Missile Crisis.
