109 Fun Facts About JFK

John F. Kennedy became the first US president of which religious faith?

Roman Catholic faith dogged Kennedy's campaign, so in September 1960 he told a gathering of Protestant ministers that his church did not speak for him.

In which Massachusetts town was JFK born on May 29, 1917?

Brookline is where Kennedy was born; after his death the family bought back the house, and his mother, Rose, recreated it as she remembered it.

JFK graduated from which university in 1940?

Harvard gave Kennedy his degree in 1940, though he had begun college at Princeton and left within months.

What was the title of Kennedy's first book, published in 1940 from his senior thesis?

Why England Slept, about Britain's unreadiness for war with Hitler, won over critics and became a bestseller.

In August 1943 the patrol boat JFK commanded, PT-109, was cut in half by what?

A Japanese destroyer rammed PT-109, and Kennedy towed a badly burned crewman to an island by a life-jacket strap clenched in his teeth.

Stranded after the PT-109 sinking, Kennedy carved a rescue message into what?

A coconut shell carried Kennedy's carved plea for help, and two Solomon Islanders' daring canoe trip with it led to the crew's rescue.

Which decoration did Kennedy receive for his actions after the PT-109 sinking?

The Navy and Marine Corps Medal honored Kennedy for helping his marooned crew to safety, and the rescue made him a war hero back home.

Kennedy's older brother Joseph Jr., killed in 1944, was serving in what role?

Joe Jr. was a Navy pilot killed on a 1944 bombing mission in Europe; his father's presidential hopes then fell on Jack, who won a House seat in 1946.

Which prize did Kennedy's Profiles in Courage win in 1957?

The Pulitzer Prize went to Profiles in Courage, about eight senators who defied party pressure, though aide Ted Sorensen later admitted drafting most chapters.

Who did Kennedy narrowly defeat in the 1960 presidential election?

Richard Nixon lost that race narrowly, but came back eight years later to win the presidency in 1968.

Which president did Kennedy succeed in January 1961?

Dwight D. Eisenhower handed over to Kennedy three days after a farewell address warning Americans against the 'military-industrial complex'.

Who was Kennedy's running mate in 1960?

Lyndon B. Johnson, the Senate majority leader from Texas, lost the nomination to Kennedy and was then picked to help hold the South.

What did Robert Frost end up doing at Kennedy's inauguration on January 20, 1961?

Reciting an older poem from memory was Frost's fallback: sun glare off the snow kept him from reading his new verses, so he recited The Gift Outright.

Which line comes from Kennedy's inaugural address?

Ask not what your country can do for you came from an address Kennedy prepared by having aide Ted Sorensen study Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

Kennedy signed the executive order creating which volunteer organisation on March 1, 1961?

The Peace Corps grew from a late-night campaign speech Kennedy gave to students at the University of Michigan in October 1960.

The failed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 was carried out by whom?

CIA-trained Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, but Cuban forces quickly overwhelmed them, a humiliation months into Kennedy's presidency.

At the June 1961 Vienna summit, which Soviet leader did Kennedy admit had 'beat the hell out of me'?

Nikita Khrushchev pressed Kennedy hard over Berlin at Vienna, and two months later East Germany began building the Berlin Wall.

In May 1961, Kennedy told Congress America should land a man on the Moon by when?

Before the decade was out was his deadline, and astronauts landed on the Moon in July 1969, more than five years after his death.

Where did Kennedy give his famous 'We choose to go to the Moon' speech on September 12, 1962?

Rice University, Houston hosted the speech in its stadium, where Kennedy said America chose the Moon not because it was easy, but because it was hard.

How many days did the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 last?

13 days of standoff ended when Moscow agreed to pull its missiles from Cuba in return for a public US pledge not to invade the island.

To end the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US secretly agreed to pull its Jupiter missiles from where?

Turkey's Jupiter missiles went under a secret deal, while Kennedy publicly pledged not to invade Cuba; a Washington-Moscow hotline followed the next year.

Which food did a popular myth say Kennedy called himself in his 1963 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech?

A jelly doughnut is the myth's claim, but it falls flat in Berlin, where that pastry is called a Pfannkuchen, not a Berliner.

What kind of treaty did Kennedy's government sign with Britain and the Soviet Union in 1963?

A nuclear test ban answered rising worldwide alarm over radioactive fallout from bomb tests in the atmosphere.

Which serious illness of the adrenal glands did Kennedy hide from the public throughout his career?

Addison's disease was diagnosed in London in 1947 by a doctor who gave him less than a year to live, yet he lived 16 more years on steroid treatments.

What colour was the Chanel suit Jacqueline Kennedy wore in the Dallas motorcade on November 22, 1963?

Bright pink and stained with blood, the suit stayed on as she stood beside the new president at his swearing-in that afternoon.

Jacqueline Kennedy likened her husband's presidency to what in a Life interview after his death?

Camelot was the Broadway musical Kennedy loved, and a week after his death she urged journalist Theodore White to frame his Life article around it.

Which star sang 'Happy Birthday, Mr. President' to Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in 1962?

Marilyn Monroe sang it in 1962 in a famed dress that sold for $4.8 million in 2016 and that Kim Kardashian wore to the 2022 Met Gala.

Which post did Kennedy's younger brother Robert hold in his administration?

Attorney General Robert Kennedy served from 1961 to 1964, then won a Senate seat from New York, which he held until his assassination in 1968.

Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 while riding in a motorcade through which Dallas location?

Dealey Plaza is where the shots came; Texas Governor John Connally, riding in the same car, was also hit but recovered.

From which building did Lee Harvey Oswald fire at the presidential motorcade?

The Texas School Book Depository had hired Oswald weeks earlier, and deputies later found a rifle stuffed between boxes on its sixth floor.

Who shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of Dallas police headquarters on November 24, 1963?

Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, shot Oswald as police moved him to another jail, and the killing went out live on television.

Where did Kennedy's vice president take the presidential oath on the afternoon of the assassination?

Aboard Air Force One at Dallas Love Field, he took the oath at 2:38 p.m. with Jacqueline Kennedy, still in her blood-stained suit, beside him.

Who chaired the commission that investigated the assassination and concluded Oswald acted alone?

Earl Warren, then Chief Justice, led the panel, and its 888-page 1964 report found persuasive evidence that one bullet hit both Kennedy and Governor Connally.

What did Jacqueline Kennedy light at her husband's Arlington grave?

An eternal flame marked a grave that drew more than 16 million visitors in its first three years, so a larger permanent site was built.

JFK Jr. famously saluted his father's casket outside St. Matthew's Cathedral on what personal occasion?

His third birthday fell on the day of the funeral, and he saluted after his mother bent down and whispered to him.

Which US coin has carried Kennedy's portrait since 1964?

The half dollar's GR monogram, for engraver Gilroy Roberts, drew complaints in 1964 that it was a communist hammer and sickle.

What was New York's JFK Airport commonly called before its December 1963 renaming?

Idlewild came from the golf course the airport displaced, and the name stuck until the airport was renamed for Kennedy in late 1963.

Which Florida cape was officially called Cape Kennedy from 1963 to 1973?

Cape Canaveral took Kennedy's name after his death, but in 1973 Florida's legislature restored the name the cape had carried for 400 years.

Which architect, later famous for the Louvre Pyramid, designed Boston's John F. Kennedy Presidential Library?

I. M. Pei's library went up on Columbia Point after Cambridge residents opposed the original site, and President Carter dedicated it in 1979.

What was JFK's father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., doing in London in 1938?

Serving as US ambassador to Britain, Joseph Kennedy was unsympathetic to British war preparations, and his isolationism eventually cost him the post.

Kennedy's 1960 campaign broke new ground with the first televised what?

Presidential debates reached television for the first time in 1960, and Kennedy's telegenic performance helped offset his rival's greater name recognition.

After which August 1963 event did Kennedy welcome civil rights leaders to the White House?

The March on Washington had worried Kennedy, who feared it would turn violent, but it went so smoothly that he congratulated its leaders.

The Kennedy Compound, JFK's 'Summer White House', stands in which Cape Cod village?

Hyannis Port was where young Jack spent summers, and he later used the family compound there as a campaign base and presidential retreat.

Which writer, later famous for Hiroshima, told Kennedy's PT-109 survival story in The New Yorker in 1944?

John Hersey portrayed Kennedy as a modest, self-deprecating hero, and the PT-109 story followed Kennedy into politics.

Kennedy narrowly lost the 1956 vice-presidential nomination to which senator, famed for televised hearings on organized crime?

Estes Kefauver of Tennessee joined Adlai Stevenson's ticket, and Kennedy's narrow loss ultimately proved a blessing.

Kennedy's covert Operation Mongoose was meant to destabilize which leader's regime?

Fidel Castro remained in power after the Bay of Pigs, so in November 1961 Kennedy launched the covert Mongoose program to harass and destabilize Cuba.

Which false-flag proposal against US targets, to be blamed on Cuba, did Kennedy reject in 1962?

Operation Northwoods, sent by the Joint Chiefs to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in March 1962, proposed fakes such as a staged Cuban attack on a jetliner.

What was the name of the ad-hoc group of advisers Kennedy formed during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

EXCOMM, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, weighed air strikes and an invasion before Kennedy chose a naval blockade.

What euphemism did Kennedy use for the naval blockade of Cuba he announced on television?

Quarantine legally set the move apart from a blockade, which under international law assumes a state of war.

Which country's parliament did Kennedy address during a June 1963 visit?

Ireland's army cadets, whose silent drill Kennedy admired on that visit, performed it at his graveside months later at Jacqueline Kennedy's request.

Kennedy's 1961 minimum wage increase was part of which domestic agenda?

The New Frontier won that wage rise, but its plan for medical care for the elderly went nowhere in Congress.

Which company first raised steel prices in April 1962, right after a union deal Kennedy had brokered?

U.S. Steel's price rise came soon after a wage deal meant to hold prices down, and Kennedy's pressure forced the company to back down.

Kennedy's Executive Order 10925 introduced which phrase into federal contracting?

Affirmative action was the name lawyer Hobart Taylor Jr. gave the plan while drafting the order, to push employers to actively fight discrimination.

Which Alabama governor stood in a university doorway in June 1963 to block two Black students?

George Wallace's stand prompted Kennedy's most forceful civil rights statement yet, an impromptu address to the nation that same day.

Who chaired the commission Kennedy created in 1961 to study the status of women?

Eleanor Roosevelt chaired it until her death in November 1962, so the commission's report, American Women, came out without her in October 1963.

Whom did Kennedy appoint to run NASA, a man whose name a famous space telescope now carries?

James E. Webb ran NASA until October 1968, lobbying Congress year after year for the money Apollo needed.

Kennedy named which lawyer, who had won Brown v Board of Education, to a federal appeals court in 1961?

Thurgood Marshall gave up leading the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which he had founded in 1940, to take the judgeship.

Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier in September 1953 in which Rhode Island city?

Newport hosted the wedding, but 10 days earlier a flood in designer Ann Lowe's studio ruined the gown, and she remade it in time.

By late 1963, Kennedy's buildup had put more than 16,000 US military personnel in which country?

South Vietnam got the buildup, yet in 1963 Kennedy announced plans to cut the number of American advisers, a move historians still debate.

What was the name of the pony John F. Kennedy's young daughter rode around the White House grounds?

Macaroni was one of three ponies the Kennedy children kept, alongside Tex and Leprechaun, and press cameras caught him carrying his small rider again and again.

Pushinka, a puppy given to John F. Kennedy's family by the Soviet premier in 1961, was the offspring of what?

A space dog named Strelka, who had travelled into orbit and back, was her mother, so American security staff X-rayed the puppy for hidden listening devices before she joined the household.

Which Neil Diamond hit did the singer say in 2007 was inspired by John F. Kennedy's young daughter?

Sweet Caroline, he said, grew from a magazine photo of the girl on a horse beside her parents, though in 2014 he added that the song was really about his wife and needed a three-syllable name.

Which product of Cuba did John F. Kennedy have an aide stockpile the night before signing the 1962 trade embargo?

Cigars, 1,200 of them, were gathered from the capital's tobacconists that evening, hours before the embargo he signed made importing them illegal.

How did John F. Kennedy tow a badly burned crewman to safety after PT-109 sank in 1943?

By a strap in his teeth: Kennedy, a strong swimmer despite his bad back, clenched the burned man's life jacket strap in his jaw and towed him for hours to a tiny island.

Which masterpiece did France lend to the United States in early 1963, with John F. Kennedy attending its unveiling?

Mona Lisa crossed the Atlantic aboard the liner SS France, and Kennedy spoke at its unveiling at the National Gallery of Art in Washington before it drew huge queues in New York.

Which fictional spy's American sales surged after John F. Kennedy named one of the novels among his ten favourite books?

James Bond's adventure From Russia, with Love made the list Kennedy gave a magazine in 1961, and the publicity turned Ian Fleming into America's biggest-selling crime writer.

Which piece of furniture, prescribed by his doctor, became a familiar sight in John F. Kennedy's Oval Office?

A rocking chair was physician Janet Travell's remedy for his aching back, and pictures of the president in his rocker made the chairs popular across the country.

John F. Kennedy joked that a dinner of Nobel laureates had one possible rival for talent: which president dining alone?

Thomas Jefferson was his one possible exception, a tribute to a predecessor famed as architect, inventor and author; the quip came at a White House dinner honouring Nobel Prize winners in April 1962.

Which bestselling novelist wrote 11/22/63, about a time traveller trying to prevent John F. Kennedy's assassination?

Stephen King first had the idea in 1971, before his debut novel appeared, but shelved it for decades because the research a historical story demanded daunted him.

By which nickname was John F. Kennedy's maternal grandfather, a two-time mayor of Boston, known to voters?

Honey Fitz was a tribute to his charm on the stump; at 83 he helped plan his grandson's first campaign, and the new president later named the official yacht after him.

Which sister of John F. Kennedy founded the Special Olympics in 1968, building on a summer camp at her farm?

Eunice Kennedy Shriver opened a day camp at her Maryland farm in 1962 so that people with intellectual disabilities could try sports, and the Games grew out of it.

Which singer re-recorded his hit High Hopes with new words as John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign theme song?

Frank Sinatra had introduced the tune in the 1959 film A Hole in the Head, where it won the Oscar for best original song, before it was reworded for the campaign trail.

Whose wife did John F. Kennedy telephone in sympathy during the 1960 campaign after her husband was jailed in Georgia?

Martin Luther King was soon released after Robert Kennedy intervened, and news of the sympathetic call drew extra Black support to the candidate shortly before polling day.

Which astronaut did John F. Kennedy decorate at the White House days after he became the first American in space?

Alan Shepard's suborbital hop lasted about fifteen minutes, and the president presented the award at the White House on 8 May 1961, three days after splashdown.

In which capital did John F. Kennedy joke in 1961 that he was merely the man who had accompanied his wife?

Paris was so taken with the First Lady's knowledge of French history that a news magazine's account of the state visit referred to the president as the fellow who came with her.

Which director made JFK, the 1991 film about a New Orleans prosecutor investigating John F. Kennedy's assassination?

Oliver Stone's film stirred such public doubt about the official account that a review board later credited it with helping to pass a 1992 law releasing assassination records.

Which Greek shipping magnate did John F. Kennedy's widow Jacqueline marry in 1968 on his private island?

Aristotle Onassis offered the privacy and security she wanted for her children, but by remarrying she gave up the Secret Service protection owed to a president's widow.

Which elite US Army soldiers wear the headgear John F. Kennedy championed, calling it a mark of distinction?

Green Berets take their popular name from the cap; Kennedy asked that the troops wear it for his October 1961 visit to Fort Bragg, the year the Army made it their exclusive headdress.

Which Hollywood actor became John F. Kennedy's brother-in-law by marrying his sister Patricia in 1954?

Peter Lawford, the English-born member of the Rat Pack, became an enthusiastic fundraiser for the senator whose family he had married into.

In which Pacific island chain was John F. Kennedy's patrol boat PT-109 lost in August 1943?

Solomon Islands waters claimed the boat, and the survivors spent six days stranded on nearby islets, the first of which was later renamed Kennedy Island.

At which university did John F. Kennedy enrol in autumn 1935, only to withdraw after two months through illness?

Princeton lost him to a stomach complaint weeks after he arrived, and poor health had already cut short a spell at the London School of Economics that same year.

From which Connecticut boarding school did John F. Kennedy graduate in 1935, ranked 64th in a class of 112?

Choate's headmaster once denounced campus troublemakers as muckers, so the teenage Kennedy named his own band of pranksters the Muckers Club; classmates nonetheless voted him most likely to succeed.

What was John F. Kennedy doing at the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945?

Reporting for Hearst newspapers was a job his father arranged through a friendship with William Randolph Hearst, and it kept the young veteran's name in the public eye before his first campaign.

Which sitting Republican senator did John F. Kennedy narrowly unseat in Massachusetts in 1952?

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. lost by about 70,000 votes while his own party carried the state for the White House; in 1916 his grandfather had beaten Kennedy's grandfather in a Senate race.

Which aide, John F. Kennedy's chief speechwriter, later said he drafted most chapters of Profiles in Courage?

Ted Sorensen, whom Kennedy called his intellectual blood bank, made the admission in a 2008 memoir after decades of rumours about who had really written the bestseller.

Which newly appointed president of Ford Motor Company did John F. Kennedy recruit as Secretary of Defense?

Robert McNamara had led Ford for under two months, the first president from outside the founding family in over fifty years, when he left Detroit for the Pentagon.

Who served as press secretary to John F. Kennedy, the first president to let news conferences air live on television?

Pierre Salinger handled reporters with such wit that he became a celebrity in his own right, and in 1964 he briefly sat in the Senate for California.

Which union boss clashed with John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert at televised Senate racketeering hearings?

Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters became the hearings' best-known target, and the future president followed up with a bill that would make unions open their books to audits.

John F. Kennedy's father Joseph was the first chairman of which Wall Street watchdog, set up in 1934?

The SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, was created to police the stock market after the 1929 crash; he ran it until 1935 and then headed the Maritime Commission.

Whose 26-second home movie, shot in Dallas on an 8mm camera, is the best-known film of John F. Kennedy's assassination?

Abraham Zapruder sold the print rights to a magazine for $50,000 the next morning, and his footage later became the first amateur film chosen for the National Film Registry.

Which governor, riding in the seat in front of President Kennedy, was seriously wounded in the 1963 Dallas shooting?

John Connally had been a member of Kennedy's own administration until late 1961, when he left to run for governor; in 1971 he took charge of the Treasury under a Republican president.

Jacqueline Kennedy modelled details of John F. Kennedy's state funeral on the funeral of which earlier president?

Lincoln had also been assassinated in office, so she asked that the East Room look as it had in 1865, and her husband's coffin rested on the same catafalque.

John F. Kennedy was the second US president buried at Arlington National Cemetery; who, in 1930, was the first?

Taft was also the first Supreme Court justice interred there, having followed his presidency with almost nine years as chief justice.

Which country named an unclimbed mountain after John F. Kennedy, whose brother Robert joined its first ascent in 1965?

Canada chose a 14,000-foot Yukon peak close to the Alaskan border, its prime minister telling parliament that a mountain, solid and enduring, was the fitting memorial.

At which English site did Britain give America land for a John F. Kennedy memorial?

Runnymede, the meadow where Magna Carta was sealed, holds a memorial reached by fifty granite steps, one for each American state, on ground the British people gave to the United States.

Which actress earned an Oscar nomination as John F. Kennedy's widow in the 2016 film Jackie?

Natalie Portman plays her in the days after the assassination, in a drama that also gave John Hurt the last screen role released in his lifetime.

Which endurance feat became an American craze in 1963 after John F. Kennedy revived an old fitness order for officers?

A 50-mile hike in twenty hours was the standard set by an earlier president's order, and Robert Kennedy completed one through snow and slush in leather office shoes.

Whose 1962 enrolment at the all-white University of Mississippi did John F. Kennedy enforce with thousands of troops?

James Meredith's arrival set off a riot that left two people dead; he endured months of isolation on campus and graduated in August 1963 with a degree in political science.

What job did Jacqueline Bouvier hold at the Times-Herald when she met her future husband John F. Kennedy?

Inquiring photographer meant stopping strangers in the street, asking each a witty question and taking a picture to run in the paper beside their answers.

John F. Kennedy's landslide in which state's May 1960 primary drove rival Hubert Humphrey out of the race?

West Virginia gave him over 60% of the vote; Humphrey, short of money, grumbled that facing the Kennedy family felt like being an independent merchant up against a chain store.

In which city did Democrats nominate John F. Kennedy for president at their 1960 national convention?

Los Angeles hosted the delegates in its Memorial Sports Arena, and the nominee, the first senator picked by either major party since 1920, gave his acceptance speech in the Coliseum next door.

At 43, John F. Kennedy became the youngest person ever to do what in American politics?

Kennedy was the youngest person to be elected president; the youngest to hold the office was a 42-year-old vice president who stepped up after an assassination in 1901.

Which phrase for the length of John F. Kennedy's presidency did historian Arthur Schlesinger use as a 1965 book title?

A Thousand Days was an insider's history: its author had watched the administration from within as a special assistant to the president, and the book won the National Book Award.

Which Secret Service code name did John F. Kennedy carry, his family's names all starting with the same letter?

Lancer was the president and Lace the First Lady; by tradition every member of a protected family gets a name beginning with the same letter, chosen to be clear over a radio.

Which actor did John F. Kennedy personally choose to portray him in the 1963 war film PT 109?

Cliff Robertson got the part once the president had watched the filmed auditions; final say over the lead was one of three conditions Kennedy set, along with accuracy and profits going to the crew.

Which comedian impersonated John F. Kennedy on The First Family, a 1962 album that sold over seven million copies?

Vaughn Meader's record won the Grammy for Album of the Year and at first sold more than a million copies a week, the fastest-selling album the industry had seen.

Which former NFL rushing leader did John F. Kennedy appoint to the Supreme Court in 1962?

Byron White, known on the field as Whizzer, led the league in rushing in two of his three professional seasons and then sat on the Court for 31 years.

Which composer wrote Mass for the 1971 opening of the performing arts centre named after John F. Kennedy?

Leonard Bernstein was commissioned by the late president's widow, and his two-hour theatre piece for singers, players and dancers opened the centre on 8 September 1971.

Off which Massachusetts island did the light aircraft flown by John F. Kennedy Jr. crash in July 1999?

Martha's Vineyard was meant to be a brief stop on a night flight from New Jersey; the president's son, his wife and his sister-in-law all died when the plane hit the Atlantic.