Kennedy John Fitzgerald

1938 - Became the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, and for six months

1940 - He served as his secretary, drawing on that experience to write his senior thesis at Harvard University on Great Britain's military unpreparedness.

1941 - He joined the U.S. Navy and two years later was sent to the South Pacific.

1945 - He was discharged, his older brother, Joe, who their father had expected would be the first Kennedy to run for office, had been killed in the war, and the family's political standard passed to John, who had planned to pursue an academic or journalistic career.

1946 - His first opportunity when he ran for Congress.

1947-1953 - Kennedy served three terms in the House of Representatives as a bread-and-butter liberal.

1949 - He accused the State Department of trying to force Chiang Kai-shek into a coalition with Mao Zedong. “What our young men had saved,” he told the House on the 25th of January.

1950 - He advocated extensive foreign aid to the emerging nations in Africa and Asia, and he surprised his colleagues by calling upon France to grant Algerian independence.

1952 - He ran for the U.S. Senate against the popular incumbent, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.

1953-1960 - Senator from Massachusetts.

1954 - He was the only New England senator to approve an extension of President Eisenhower's reciprocal-trade powers, and he vigorously backed the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, despite the fact that over a period of 20 years no Massachusetts senator or congressman had ever voted for it.

1956 - He had nearly become Stevenson's vice presidential running mate.

1957 - Awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

1958 - He made race for reelection to the Senate a test of his popularity in Massachusetts.

1960 - On January, he formally announced his presidential candidacy.

1961 - On May, he committed the United States to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, and, while he would not live to see this achievement either, his advocacy of the space program contributed to the successful launch of the first American manned spaceflights.

1962 - Edward Kennedy was elected to the president's former Senate seat in Massachusetts.

1963 - On the 22th of November, he and Jacqueline Kennedy were in an open limousine riding slowly in a motorcade through downtown Dallas. At 12:30 PM the president was struck by two rifle bullets, one at the base of his neck and one in the head. He was pronounced dead shortly after arrival at Parkland Memorial Hospital.