Kennedy was the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic ever elected US President. He had all possible natural advantages: a keen intellect, boundless energy, good looks, and an influential family background. His "Thousand Days" at the White House are often seen as a brief interlude of hope and confidence for America
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Joe Kennedy, US ambassador to Britain, instilled all his nine children with an over-riding competitive instinct and a deep interest in public affairs. JFK's mother, Rose, belonged to a tough and politically active Irish family. JFK's grandfather, John Fitzgerald, was mayor of Boston, and known as 'Honey Fitz'
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After creditable wartime service as a submarine commander, Kennedy ran for Congress on his 'home turf' of Boston. In the election campaign he displayed some of the politcal skills - charm, stamina and singleness of purpose - that were later to propel him to the Senate in 1952, then to the White House in 1960
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Kennedy's prominence in the Senate meant that he was soon being touted as a possible presidential candidate. Meanwhile his political views were hardening: his attitude to civil rights became forthright. On foreign policy he was an internationalist who sympathised with national liberation movements in Africa and Asia
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John Kennedy was elected 35th president of the United States by the narrowest of margins. His opponent was Richard Nixon, vice-president Eisenhower's outgoing administration. It was a hard battle but Kennedy benefitted from such novelties as televised debates, in which he shone
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The Kennedy years are a strange paradox: the world went to the brink of nuclear war, racial strife exploded on America, and the cold war intensified. Yet, largely due to Kennedy's own personality, it was also a time of optimism and idealism, when it seemed any feat - even sending a man to the moon - was possible
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Kennedy's first foreign initiative was a disaster. He authorised a CIA-funded invasion of communist Cuba, a matter of miles from the US coast. The invasion failed dismally, actually strengthening the communist regime, and was widely condemned as interference in another country's sovereignty. The episode also tarnished Kennedy's reputation for high-minded idealism
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When the governor of Mississippi tried to prevent the enrolment of James Meredith, a black student, at the state university, Kennedy forced the governor to back down The case became a battleground of race relations. Riots broke out in which three people died
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In 1963 Kennedy visited Berlin, where a wall dividing the Soviet-controlled sector from the rest of the city had only recently been erected. In the besieged city, Kennedy made a defiant speech, perhaps the most eloquent of his life, which cemented his reputation as a defender of freedom and democracy
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Kennedy saw the relationship between the USA and the USSR in terms of a competition. For both sides, it was a question of whose system worked best. America had been shocked when Russia put a man in orbit, and Kennedy resolved that the US would do something even more spectacular
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The rivalry between America and the USSR nearly destroyed the world in 1962 when Soviet president Khrushchev secretly deployed nuclear missiles on Cuba, within easy striking range of the US. Kennedy blockaded Cuban ports, and demanded the removal of the missiles. Nuclear war seemed inevitable, until Khrushchev backed down
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Robert Kennedy was nine years younger than John, and he was the President's closest adviser. He took on JFK's mantle after the assassination in Dallas, and would doubtless have become President of the United States himself had he not been gunned down in his turn
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Kennedy succeeded Eisenhower as president. The contrast between them could not have been more stark, and was one of the factors which worked in Kennedy's favour. He was youthful, energetic, forward-looking; Ike was ageing, ill, and a hero of battles even then long in the past
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It fell to Lyndon Johnson to take over as president following Kennedy's death. As President, Johnson was able to make law the civil rights legislation that Kennedy believed to be a vital step on the way to a reconcilation between America's blacks and whites
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The relations of the Kennedys with J Edgar Hoover was fraught. Deeply conservative, Hoover distrusted John and Bobby's reforming zeal, and they were unhappy that Hoover looked on the FBI as his private empire. Many FBI documents relating to the Kennedy's are still secret
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John Kennedy was shot at 1.25 pm on November 22 1963 as his motorcade passed down Elm Street, Dallas, Texas. He died 35 minutes later in hospital. The death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy stunned the world; America has yet to recover from the trauma of that day
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The events surrounding the assassination of JFK remain obscure. Officially, the president was murdered by a lone killer, Lee Harvey Oswald. But there is evidence that more than one marksman was involved, and that one of them was stationed on the 'grassy knoll', to the front and right of the approaching motorcade
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Lee Harvey Oswald, a former communist sympathiser, was arrested a few hours after the murder. He insisted that he had been set up, but was himself murdered before he could say much else. He bled to death in hospital, a few feet from the spot where Kennedy died
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Around 2,500 studies of Kennedy's death were produced in the thirty years after the event. Among the culprits proposed by conspiracy theorists are the CIA, Cuban exiles, the unions, the mafia, vice-president Johnson, the KGB, JFK's father, Texas oil barons, and of course, the sad loner Oswald
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It is hard to say how good a president John Kennedy was, and impossible to say how good a one he might have become. As with all exceptional people who die young, Kennedy's enduring greatness lies in his unfulfilled potential
