Kennedy's son crashed. Photos of the Kennedy family. Tragedy and greatness of one American family

09.03.2020

On July 16, 1999, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. tragically died in a plane crash. And 36 years ago, his father, US President John F. Kennedy, was shot dead in Dallas. But evil fate began to haunt the Kennedy family much earlier: members of America's most influential political clan rarely died a natural death.

Highway Patricks
Biographers do not like to remember the first of the Kennedys to set foot on American soil: they say he was not the best person. Little is known about Patrick Kennedy. He was born in Ireland, in County Wexford, in 1823 and was a peasant. Like many of his compatriots, Patrick fled from the terrible famine that struck Ireland in 1840 to America. On the ship, he met a girl named Mary Joanna and fell in love with her at first sight. They had five children on American soil.
The heir to the family was Patrick Joseph, who died 35 years old, leaving his wife a good inheritance. True, it is generally accepted that after his death, the wife was left with four children in her arms and without a single cent in her pocket. But this is the official version. According to unofficial information, there was money in the family, and they were earned by the family business - robbery on the highway.
Since then things have progressed. The next Kennedy died quite a wealthy man and the owner of his own bank. Thus, his son, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, had money from birth. But he needed not just money, but a lot of money. After graduating from Harvard University, he became president of a bank at the age of 25. Father-in-law, the mayor of Boston, helped his son-in-law avoid being drafted into the army in 1917 by giving him a position in a warship building company. When the First World War ended, the manager of a military plant retrained as a broker. Colleagues spoke of him extremely badly, but recognized that Joseph Patrick knew how to make money. Capital growth was helped by two circumstances. In the mid-1920s, Kennedy got fed up with the stock exchange and took all his money from there, investing it in Hollywood. And from 1920 to 1933, the main profits for Joseph Patrick were given by the illegal trade in alcohol. On the eve of the second world clan, the Kennedys were considered the second richest family in the world (after the Rockefellers).
The Puritan wife believed that sex was needed only to have children. Nine times in a lifetime? For Joseph Patrick, this was too little, he began to seek solace on the side. He had many actress mistresses, including Gloria Swanson, who became a movie star in his own studio. He slept with his secretary Jeanette de Rozier and constantly used the services of prostitutes.
Such was Joseph Patrick Kennedy, the father of the future US president. It is he and his wife Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald who are considered the founders of the Kennedy clan. And it was Joseph Patrick, according to the Kennedys themselves, who brought the curse on his children.

Dead brothers and sisters
Joseph Patrick and Rose had nine children. Five met a terrible fate.
First, the daughter of Rosemary ended up in a lunatic asylum. She suffered from mental retardation since childhood, and she had uncontrollable outbursts of anger. In 1941, at her father's insistence, doctors performed a lobotomy on Rosemary. The operation was unsuccessful. The girl turned into what psychiatrists among themselves call a "vegetable" - into a creature incapable of the simplest meaningful actions. She died in a mental hospital.
Another daughter, Kathleen, was left a widow during World War II and a few years later, in 1948, died in a plane crash. She was 28 years old. Then her father said for the first time: "A curse hangs over the Kennedy family."
Son Joseph was brought up as the heir to a wealthy family. London School of Economics, Harvard. He was one year away from his Master of Laws when Joseph Patrick volunteered for the Air Force. After a year of patrol flights in the Caribbean, in September 1943 he was transferred to England. He was a heavy bomber pilot, the best in his squadron. On August 12, 1944, Joseph Patrick flew to the next mission - to the area from where the Germans launched V-2 rockets. For unknown reasons, the plane, loaded with eight tons of explosives, exploded in the air.
It seems that John's biography also began. Economics - in London, law - at Harvard, volunteer - in the Navy. On the night of August 1-2, 1943, a torpedo boat under the command of Lieutenant Kennedy was hit by a torpedo fired from a Japanese cruiser. Kennedy swam 5 km to the coast of New Georgia Island, towing a wounded sailor. He escaped to live another 20 years, become the President of the United States and die from an assassin's bullet.
Robert survived him by only five years. He was his father's favorite. They say it was his father who insisted that Robert become Attorney General in the Kennedy government. Then President Kennedy was assassinated. In 1968, Robert, continuing the family business, became one of the most likely candidates for the presidency of the Democratic Party. And he was shot dead by an Arab fanatic who sentenced him to death because the American Democrats had sympathy for Israel.
The only son who survived to this day is Senator Edward. His life was broken in one moment - July 18, 1969. Until that day, he was considered a potential candidate for the US presidency. After - a scoundrel. On that day, he drove a car across a bridge leading to an island with the catchy name of Chappaquiddick. There was one passenger in the car - his assistant and mistress Mary Jo Kopechne. For unknown reasons, the car lost control and fell off the bridge. The senator floated out, leaving the 31-year-old woman to die. A terrible scandal followed, after which the presidency had to be forgotten.
However, neither the shame of Edward, nor the murders of John and Robert, the father of the family, Joseph Patrick, saw it. In December 1961, he suffered a severe stroke and for eight years, until his death, remained paralyzed and practically mute. He did not react in any way to the murders of his children. And fifteen years did not live up to the tragic death of the first of his grandchildren.

latest generation
The next victim was the son of the shot Robert Kennedy - David. He grew up as a happy, spoiled boy. Once, when he was almost 13 years old, Dave didn't want to go to bed on time. He watched TV: his father was shown live. How the father was killed was also shown live. Dave could never forget this.
A few days later, David wrote a note to his mother: "It is better to have such a father for 10 years than any other for 1,000,000 years." With depression, the boy began to fight cocaine and heroin. Several times he was treated for drug addiction, but to no avail.
On the evening of April 24, 1984, David dined at the Rain Dancer restaurant in Palm Beach, California with German Marion Nieman. As she later recalled, he drank at least seven glasses of vodka without eating. When they returned to the hotel, David began to tell her about the death of his father.
The next morning he went to the family estate in Palm Beach. The gatekeeper did not let the dirty drug addict in, mistaking Dave for a beggar. And he was in such a state that he could not even explain who he was. He had to return to the hotel. He hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the door of his room, sniffed cocaine, drank the pills prescribed by the doctor. Then he remembered that he had some other pills that he borrowed from his grandmother. Dave hoped they would work like a drug. It was a cardiological remedy called Demoryl. A mixture of cocaine and demoril was fatal.
One of Dave's brothers, Joseph, is alive and well. In 1973, he managed to survive in a terrible car accident - his companion remained paralyzed. Another brother - Michael - was less fortunate: in 1997 he decided to go skiing and crashed to death.
Perhaps, after all this, the recent death of President Kennedy's son, John Fitzgerald Jr., will seem accidental to some. Who could have foreseen that the plane, in which, besides him, were his wife Carolina and sister-in-law Lauren, would fall into the ocean? Except perhaps their grandfather, Joseph Patrick, when he said that a curse was hanging over the Kennedy family.

ALEXEY ALEKSEEV

Dangerous surname

Year	Name	Event
1941	Rosemary Kennedy, daughter	Placed for the rest of her life in a closed
	Joseph and Rose	psychiatric hospital for
		mental retardation
1943	John Fitzgerald	Torpedo boat under it
	Kennedy	sunk in the area
		Solomon Islands. Kennedy
		managed to escape and save the members
		crew
1944	Joseph P.	Died in car accident aged
	Kennedy Jr., son	29 years
	Joseph and Rose
1948	Kathleen Kennedy, daughter	Died in a plane crash in
	Joseph and Rose	age 28
1963	Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, son	Born prematurely, died at
	John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline	age 3 months
1963	John Fitzgerald	Killed in Dallas at age 46
	Kennedy son of Joseph and
	Rose, 35th President of the United States
1968	Robert Fitzgerald	Killed in Los Angeles aged 42
	Kennedy son of Joseph and	years
	Rose
1969	Edward Michael Kennedy, son	Got into a car accident
	Joseph and Rose	Dyke bridge near the island
		Chappaquiddick (Massachusetts).
		Saved from falling into the water
		car and left for dead
		passenger - his personal
		Mary Jo Kopechne's assistant
1973	Edward Kennedy Jr.,	Survived a leg amputation due to
	son of Edward	cancer
1973	Joseph Kennedy, son	Got into a car accident
	Roberta	as a result of which the passenger
		the car remained paralyzed
		for life
1984	David Kennedy, son	Died of a drug overdose
	Roberta
1986	Patrick Kennedy, son	Completed cocaine treatment
	Edward	dependencies
1991	William Kennedy Smith,	Accused of rape, on trial
	nephew of Edward	found not guilty
1997	Michael Kennedy, son	Died skiing.
	Roberta	Charged with unlawful association with
		teenage girl working
		baby-sitter in his family
1999	John Fitzgerald	Died in a plane crash with
	Kennedy Jr., son	wife Caroline Bissett and
	John F. Kennedy	sister-in-law Lauren Bissett

Signatures
Note: there were no photographs in the source, which is mentioned below, and therefore: the first photo was "borrowed" from the resource http://news.nrs.com/news/life/usa/190609_193846_07762.html
The second from the resource http://www.jim3dlong.com/recent-photo-conv-121.html
Still looking for other photos...

Joseph and Rose Kennedy with nine children. 1938 From left to right sitting - Eunice, Jean, Edward (in the arms of his father), Patricia, Kathleen (died in a plane crash), standing - Rosemary (died in a mental hospital), Robert (shot), John (shot), mother, Joseph Jr. (exploded in airplane).
Senator Robert F. Kennedy with his wife and children. Sixth from right, David, died of a drug overdose. Third left - Michael, crashed while skiing.
The Kennedy brothers, 1962 Left to right: John, Robert, Edward. John became president and was assassinated. Robert was about to run for president and was assassinated. Edward's presidential plans were interrupted by a loud scandal. Exactly 30 years ago, Senator Edward Kennedy escaped from a car that fell into the water, leaving his assistant and mistress, Mary Jo Kopechne, to die (on cut)
John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy after the baptism of their son, John Fitzgerald Jr. Both father and son faced a tragic death.
Prior to becoming Attorney General in his brother's presidential administration, Robert Kennedy didn't know what to do. Pictured: Robert (left) with Chief Justice William Douglas in Stalingrad. 1955
The last victims of the birth curse: John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife, Caroline Bissett. Died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999
Bill Clinton with John Kennedy Jr. Clinton always considered his father his ideal and the best president in the history of America. On Friday, the current US president attended a memorial service for the tragically dead Kennedy Jr., his wife Caroline Bissett and sister-in-law Lauren Bissett.
At the house of John F. Kennedy Jr. in Manhattan. The last time America grieved so much for Princess Diana.
http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=15750

*********************

And again the pain in the Kennedy family, at the age of 77, Edward Kennedy, the US Democratic Senator, passed away. A few days earlier, another representative of the Kennedy clan died, at the age of 88, the sister of the assassinated US President John, Unis Kennedy Shriver, died. (She was the mother-in-law of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger). And 4 years ago, at the age of 86, another sister, Rosemary Kennedy, died.

This family had money, power and fame. All but one: the ability to die a natural death. Sooner or later, each of the Kennedys understood: the famous surname is not only great luck, but a rare misfortune.

Under the motto "All or nothing" lived the father of a large clan - Joseph Patrick Kennedy. He was born in a wealthy family, but he soon realized that there is never a lot of money. He did everything: speculated in stocks, traded in alcohol, bypassing the "dry law", borrowed money from the mafia to buy and resell real estate. And at the age of 35 he became a multimillionaire! Only the Rockefellers were richer than him in the USA. A speculator married for convenience. His wife was Rose Fitzgerald, daughter of the mayor of Boston. The marriage gave Kennedy new opportunities - he avoided being drafted into the army during the First World War and began building military ships.

Success has corrupted the cynical businessman. He had dozens of romances. Among his mistresses was Gloria Swanson herself, a silent film star of those years.

In the early 1930s, Kennedy set himself a new challenge: to become secretary of the treasury, and then the president of the country. Twice during the election he helped Roosevelt with money. As a token of gratitude, he sent Kennedy as ambassador to Britain. Joseph Patrick failed this test. At first he said that "the Jews themselves are to blame for Hitler's cruelty", and then he even called not to fight the Nazis, but to be friends!

Kennedy returned home "on the shield." Now his dreams were to be realized by children. They had to bear the cross of their father's great hopes all their lives.

“There is no place for weaklings in this family!” - Kennedy Sr. liked to repeat to his children. He prepared them for great achievements, but life seemed to decide to punish the millionaire. He spent the last 8 years of his life in a wheelchair, he could not even speak.

In 1941, his daughter Rosemary was admitted to a mental hospital. The diagnosis is developmental delay. The father insisted on a lobotomy, which completely deprived the 23-year-old girl of her mind. Three years later, the eldest son, Joseph Jr., died in the war. In 1948, new grief: the life of her daughter Kathleen was cut short in a plane crash. "Our family is cursed!" Kennedy Sr. exclaimed in a fit of anger. But he did not refuse the dream of seeing his son as president. John performed it in 1960. For my father's sake and against my own will.

For a decade, it seemed to everyone that the evil fate receded. John survived the battles of World War II, bypassed Nixon in the presidential election, took up reforms. He is young, active, America melts from his smile. But still...

First, he was a deeply ill man. He suffered from asthma, inflammation of the adrenal glands, struggled with immunodeficiency, had a front-line spinal injury. The president was relieved of pain when he took painkillers or stood on crutches. Secondly, in the middle of the working day, John could get drunk, smoke marijuana or sniff cocaine. And finally, like his father, he was a rare libertine. Marriage with the beautiful Jacqueline did not settle down. Among the president's mistresses were both simple secretaries and Hollywood divas.

On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy died in Dallas. The main version of the murder is a political order. The president failed to take over Cuba, unleashed the massacre in Vietnam, and allowed the government to print dollars without backing gold. He was replaced by his younger brother Robert, by that time already a US Senator and Attorney General.

Loving husband, father of many children, a man without bad habits. That person was Robert Kennedy. Of course, he also nominated his candidacy for the presidency at the suggestion of his father. On June 5, 1968, Robert won the presidential primaries in California and ... on the same evening he was shot dead by a Palestinian Serhan. The terrorist explained his act simply: Kennedy had no right to support Israel.

It was the turn of another younger brother, Edward Kennedy, to fight for power. Until the age of 77, he lived only by a miracle! In 1964, the plane in which Edward was flying crashed. Everyone died except Kennedy.

In 1969, a new tragedy - a car driven by Edward fell off the bridge into the river at night. Most likely, Kennedy was drunk. Having surfaced, he did not even think about rescuing a passenger - Robert Kennedy's former secretary, Mary Jo Kopechne. More than 5, back at the hotel, Edward pretended not to leave the room that night! And in the morning, as if nothing had happened, I had breakfast with my pregnant wife ... However, the scandal could not be avoided. Edward spent two months in correctional labor, after which he said goodbye to the dream of the presidency, but became the "prophet" of the Democratic Party in the US Senate.

The curse of the Kennedy clan overtook Edward in 2008 - doctors diagnosed a brain tumor. On August 25, 2009, the last of the brothers passed away.

The death of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and all his sons did not end the clan's troubles. The only surviving son of John and Jacqueline Kennedy, John Jr., did not go into politics, choosing journalism as his life's work. But this did not save him from misfortune. In 1999, he crashed on his private jet in a thunderstorm. His wife Caroline and her sister Lauren died with him.

Robert Kennedy's son, David Anthony, the only one of 11 children, saw his father killed while watching television. This shocked the guy and ruined him - he became addicted to drugs and in 1985 died from a cocaine overdose.

Robert Kennedy's sixth son, Michael, died while on holiday at a ski resort in Aspen. The heart of a 39-year-old man stopped at the hospital. And finally, in 2011, Edward Kennedy's eldest daughter, Kara Ann, passed away. In 2002, she was cured of lung cancer, but 9 years later she became a victim of a heart attack.

What is the curse on the Kennedy clan? And who is primarily responsible for it? Let's add one more ancestor to the biography of the family, the grandfather of the millionaire Joseph Patrick - the emigrant Patrick Kennedy.

The youngest son of a poor farmer, he was born in Ireland in 1823. When a famine broke out in the British Isles in the 1940s, Patrick fled after his friend Barron to the United States. The donkey, like the one in Boston, married his cousin, became the father of five children ... He was in poverty. And they say that when poverty became unbearable, he left home and joined a gang of robbers. In 1850, Patrick brought a curse on his family. On one of the roads in Texas, the bandits plundered the wedding procession, raped and killed the bride and her mother. Dying, the women cursed their tormentors...

The first victim of retribution was Patrick himself. At the age of 35, he died of cholera. When and on whom will the Kennedy curse be exhausted? Only time will give the answer.

Text: Evgenia Yudintseva

Hindus call it bad karma, Christians call it family curse. Some may laugh at prejudices, but the stories of some families whose members have been dying unnatural deaths for many decades will make even the most severe skeptics doubt. We have made a selection of stories of famous clans with an unfortunate fate. Particularly impressionable is better to pass by this material!

Kennedy clan

A curse: death from terrible diseases and disasters

Who cursed McNorman women

Cause: murder

In the genealogical tree of the genus, posted in the Wikipedia electronic encyclopedia, the first of the Kennedys, the Irishman Patrick, who set foot on American soil in 1840, is not present. The initial capital of the Kennedy clan, which would later become one of the richest in the United States, was earned dishonestly. After all, Patrick Kennedy was known as the most common highwayman.

In 1850, in Texas, the Kennedy gang attacked Sir McNorman's stagecoach. Lady MacNorman was taking her young daughter Jill to a wedding. The booty was rich - the stagecoach was loaded with the dowry of a noble bride. But the bandits were not satisfied with the robbery, first they killed the coachman and all those accompanying them, then the women, having previously outraged them. Before their death, the mother and daughter cursed their killers...

After 8 years, Patrick died at the age of 35, leaving his wife Mary Joanna and newborn son Patrick Joseph a good inheritance. Despite the fact that the descendants of Patrick Kennedy were not to blame for anything, the McNorman curse took effect. Patrick's grandson - Joseph Patrick - ended his days as a paralyzed invalid. If he could speak, he would scream in pain as his children died one by one...

Joseph Patrick's daughter Rosemary died in an insane asylum: in 1941, she was unsuccessfully lobotomized, as a result of which the girl turned into a "vegetable". Another daughter, Kathleen, was widowed during World War II and died in a plane crash in 1948 at the age of 28. Son Joseph volunteered for military aviation: in 1944, his plane, for unknown reasons, exploded in the air. Another son, John, the 35th President of the United States, was shot dead in 1963. After 5 years, in 1968, an Arab fanatic shot another son - Robert, a senator and presidential candidate from the Democratic Party. The youngest, Edward, lived a long life and died at the age of 77 from a brain tumor. But he also had some “adventures”: in 1969, the car of a 37-year-old presidential candidate fell off a bridge. Edward's mistress, Mary Jo Kopechne, was in the car. Kennedy himself swam out, but did not help the woman. A terrible scandal followed, all the media called Edward a scoundrel, and the presidency had to be forgotten.

Joseph Patrick's grandchildren were not so lucky either. Robert Kennedy's son David, as a teenager, was addicted to hard drugs - cocaine and heroin. In 1984, he made himself a lethal cocktail of vodka, cocaine, and heart medicine. David's brother Joseph was more fortunate: in 1973, he managed to survive in a terrible car accident, after which his companion was paralyzed. Another son of Robert, Michael, died in 1997 while skiing.

The son of John and Jacqueline Kennedy, John Fitzgerald Jr., died in 1999 in a plane crash: the plane in which he was flying with his wife Caroline fell into the ocean. The curse is still in effect: less than a year ago in his own barn, son Robert and nephew John, 52-year-old Mary Kennedy. Terrible, but the question is spinning on the tongue: who is next in line?

Clan Grimaldi

A curse: bad luck in marriage

Who cursed witch

Cause: resentment

According to the family legend of the Grimaldi family, the first prince of Monaco, Rainier, in the 13th century kidnapped a young girl in Holland, whom he then dishonored and abandoned. The beauty, who failed to become a princess, turned out to be a witch. "None of the Grimaldi will be given to know happiness in marriage!" she cursed the offender.

The prophecy has come true. As the old-timers of Monaco say, for centuries, not a single Grimaldi married for love. But in 1956, Prince Rainier III of Monaco decided to break this vicious circle and married not by calculation, as is customary among monarchs. His chosen one was the Hollywood actress Grace Kelly, who came from a very rich, but not at all noble family.

“Something strange is happening to me. I feel like I am getting happier every minute,” Kelly admitted when she arrived in Monaco for the wedding. The couple lived together for a quarter of a century. Three children appeared in the marriage - son Albert and daughters Caroline and Stephanie. It was whispered in the principality that the curse of the Dutch witch had lost its power. It wasn't like that.

A few years after the wedding, Grace felt unhappy. The crowned husband did not allow his wife to act in films, she was very bored, in the royal palace she felt like she was in a golden cage. And on September 13, 1982, the car that Grace was driving crashed into the abyss. Her 17-year-old daughter Stephanie was in the car at the time. The girl survived, and the 52-year-old princess died a day later without regaining consciousness.

After the death of his wife, Prince Rainier never remarried. But only the lazy did not gossip about the love affairs of his children. The first marriage of Carolina's eldest daughter, with the French banker Philippe Junot, lasted only 2 years. Her second husband, Stefano Casiraghi, died in an accident during the regatta. Caroline's third husband was Prince Ernst August V of Hanover, with whom she has been living separately since 2009. Interestingly, when in 2005 the prince was hospitalized with an acute attack of pancreatitis, some media even managed to “bury” him. Princess Grace's youngest daughter, Stephanie, outdid her sister in the number of novels. To list her men is an impossible task. The princess was officially married only twice (first to her personal bodyguard Daniel Ducret, then to the circus acrobat Adan Lopez Perez). Both marriages ended in divorce.

But the son of Rainier and Grace, the reigning Prince of Monaco, Albert II, distinguished himself most of all. He has a million love affairs (including affairs with Brooke Shields, Sharon Stone, Gwyneth Paltrow, Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer), two illegitimate children (one from a waitress, the second from a black flight attendant), as well as accusations of rape, pedophilia and homosexuality (nobody could prove anything). In the summer of 2011, Albert married the Olympic champion, swimmer from South Africa Charlene Wittstock, who. Despite the fact that the Principality of Monaco really needs a legitimate heir,.

Gandhi clan

A curse: killings

Who cursed people

Cause: breaking tradition

Even now, India is one of those few countries where a large part of the population honors traditions. And in the first half of the 20th century, almost everyone observed them - except for a handful of revolutionaries. Which, of course, include the first Prime Minister of the country Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira. We will not go into the intricacies of the caste system, we will only say that it was strictly forbidden in India to marry a representative of another caste, and even more so of another faith.

The freedom-loving Indira Nehru did not give a damn about all these rules. While studying at the London School of Economics in England, the beauty met a Parsi (Parsis are followers of Zoroastrianism) Feroz Gandhi (he is not a relative, but just the namesake of Jawaharlal Nehru's mentor Mahatma Gandhi) and married him in 1942.

Since Indira was the daughter of the Prime Minister, this circumstance did not go unnoticed by the population of the country. The girl, who belonged to the Vaishya varna (traders, cattle breeders and farmers), received a lot of curses in her address from both ordinary people and clergymen.

At 43, Indira was widowed: in 1958, Feroz suffered a severe heart attack and died 2 years later, leaving his wife two sons, Rajiv and Sanjay. After 4 years, Gandhi was waiting for another loss: her father died of a heart attack.

When in 1968 her eldest son Rajiv decided to marry a foreigner, Italian Sonia Maino, whom he met while studying at Cambridge in England, Indira, who by that time had become the country's prime minister, did not mind. Rajiv did not plan to go into politics; Gandhi predicted a political career for her youngest son Sanjay. Grandiose plans were not destined to come true - in 1980, Sanjay died in a plane crash.

However, on the conscience of Indira is not only a violation of caste traditions. She, for example, introduced forced sterilization (of men who had two or more children) to curb population growth. Given that the birth of children for the Indians is a blessing from God, Gandhi again incurred the wrath of the people.

Fatal for her was the desecration of the shrine of the Sikhs - she crushed the uprising by invading the Golden Temple in Amritsar. For this, in October 1984, Indira was shot point blank by her own bodyguards. 20 bullets were found in the prime minister's body.

After the death of his mother, the government was headed by the eldest son of Indira Rajiv. But he survived her by only 7 years. In May 1991, he was killed by a Tamil suicide bomber who detonated a bomb hidden under his clothes at the moment when Rajiv approached the crowd. His son Rahul continues Gandhi's work. He is a Member of Parliament and Vice President of the Indian National Congress, and a potential prime ministerial candidate. Interestingly, the widow of Rajiv Sonia, despite her Italian origin, also became a prominent politician in India.

Agnelli clan

A curse: death

Who cursed unknown

Cause: cooperation with the Nazis

The Italians call the Agnelli family, which owns the FIAT automobile concern and the Juventus football club, their answer to the Kennedy clan. It is whispered that this family was also cursed by someone. Fortunately for Agnelli, they are as far from Kennedy as the moon, although there are indeed a couple of scary stories in the family chronicles.

Perhaps the most impressive of these happened in 1935, when the son of FIAT founder Giovanni Agnelli, Edoardo, was beheaded by the propeller of a seaplane, which he carelessly approached. It sounds so creepy and implausible that some biographical sources prefer to write that Edoardo Agnelli died in a plane crash.

It was from this case that they started talking about the curse of the family. It was rumored that this happened because Giovanni Agnelli worked closely with the Nazis: thanks to Benito Mussolini, he managed to organize mass production of cars.

Due to the death of Edoardo, a non-family member, longtime friend Giovanni Vittorio Valetta, had to lead FIAT. Under his leadership, the company prospered, but in 1966 it returned to the ownership of Agnelli. Edoardo's son Gianni Agnelli became president. Under him, the business of the company did not go very well. Gianni also had no successors. His son Eduardo treated capitalism with deep contempt, and instead of business he was fond of Eastern religions and drugs. He liked to shock his father by making statements to reporters that after he took over the company, he would demolish all the factories and plant flowers in their place. When Eduardo was arrested for drug smuggling into Kenya, an enraged Gianni publicly disowned his son and named his nephew Giovanni Alberto as his successor. Alas, the plans were not destined to come true: in 1997, Giovanni Alberto died of stomach cancer, at the age of 33.

And in 2000, Eduardo, at the age of 46, committed suicide by jumping off the Turin bridge. Then the media again started talking about the curse of Agnelli.

After the death of Gianni Agnelli in 2003 from cancer, FIAT was headed by his brother Umberto, who, however, died a year later from the same disease. In 2004, Gianni Agnelli's grandson, John, son of his daughter Margherita and writer Alain Elkann, became president of the company...

To be continued!

The founder of the American branch of Kennedy, almost like a famous saint, was called Patrick. He arrived on American soil from Ireland. It was 1849. Patrick was 26 years old, very poor and very active...

Scary energetic Irishman

His background was this. In the Irish town of Dunganstown, Patrick rented a plot of land, where, like other peasants, he was going to grow potatoes.
He strove for independence, but the field brought almost no income. Every year I had to pay the owner for rent, buy the necessary equipment - and Patrick lived in monstrous poverty. His house was more like a barn for cattle - with an earthen floor, blown by the winds in the cold and heated in the spring.
Patrick saved on everything: he had no furniture, he did not buy expensive candles, he ate from hand to mouth and wore his clothes to holes. He worked like hell - from dawn to dusk, but it was all in vain. The rent grew, and the tenant did not grow rich. Miraculously, he managed to hold out for five years without dying. And then disaster struck: the Irish fields were struck by potato rot. They said that it was brought from America. Almost the entire potato crop perished. Since the potato was Ireland's staple food, an unthinkable famine broke out. Of course, epidemics of cholera and typhus followed. People began to die. The population of Ireland by 1849 had thinned by a million people. Patrick Kennedy decided that he had nothing to look forward to in his homeland. He confessed and received the blessing of the pater, collected his belongings and went to the nearest port, and from there to the British Liverpool, from where ships sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, there was no talk of any cabin.
Patrick rode in the lower class, in the hold below deck - this is how slaves from the Black Continent were usually transported. And usually a third of the passengers in the holds died in six weeks of travel. Patrick managed to survive the road and, along with other Irish survivors, he landed in Boston (Massachusetts). Once across the ocean, Patrick did not go to explore the western lands. He had enough peasant labor in his homeland. He went to work at the shipyard. He was taken as a laborer, it was the same hellish work as the processing of a potato allotment - from dawn to dusk. The biographers of the family say about the future: Patrick managed to get a job as a cooper, get married, have children and thus start the Kennedy family in America. But the Kennedys themselves for some reason do not like to mention the name of their ancestor, and not at all because he was a poor immigrant, and not a real American.
The reason is different: Patrick was involved in the stagecoach robbery in 1850. Allegedly, having despaired of supporting his family on a dollar a week (such was the salary at the shipyard), he became a robber and robbed crews on the roads of Texas with other desperate Irishmen. Once he caught a good booty: the McNorman family was carrying their daughter to the wedding, along with a proper dowry. The robbers attacked the stagecoach, took away the property, and killed everyone - including women. According to legend, before her death, Mother McNorman cursed the killers, and her curse, according to conspiracy theorists, still applies to the Kennedy family. Patrick allegedly did not pay attention to the words of the victim, he significantly improved the financial situation of his family and was able to leave his wife and son Patrick Joseph at least a small inheritance. The immigrant Kennedy died young - at 35 years old. From cholera.

Born in America

The Kennedys prefer not to descend from Patrick, but from Patrick Joseph. Patrick Joseph was a slum kid. And also the son of a widow. In addition to him, in this incomplete family there were three more sisters. The only one of all the children, Patrick Joseph received at least some education - he studied at a church school. But basically he worked - first he helped his mother, and then he independently traded from the tray. And saved, saved, saved. As a result, he managed to save up for a small pub in a good part of the city. He was really good at selling liquor.
Soon he already owned shares in several similar establishments, and then only managed a bush of outlets. Thanks to the alcohol trade, this Kennedy formed many necessary and useful connections with clients. And he was advised to join the Democratic Party and go into politics. He was elected first to the State House of Representatives and then to the local Senate. In addition, he successfully married, invested in coal companies, banks, land, railways - and achieved a significant position in society. In any case, his son Joseph Patrick did not have to start his life from scratch.
Joseph, the first of the Kennedys, managed to get not just an education, but a prestigious education - he studied at Harvard. He managed to successfully marry - to Rose Fitzgerald, the daughter of the Boston mayor, a very rich man who was at the head of the Boston elite. Joseph and his father-in-law had a common passion - they were incredibly fond of money. And they knew how to make them almost out of thin air. Joseph became a banker even before his marriage, and then invested in real estate, stocks, the new art of cinema, but he got rich, of course, in the liquor trade during Prohibition.

Then he became friends with bootleggers, gangsters and the mafia. A personal friendship with President Roosevelt earned him the position of ambassador to Great Britain. However, this was embarrassing: Joseph was an anti-Semite and he was impressed by Nazi Germany, so he managed to become a personal enemy of Churchill. It was, by the way, World War II! The ambassador had to be removed, he had to leave politics due to careless statements. And Joseph focused on the children - the young men were to achieve the highest power in the country, so he decided. There were four of them - Joseph, John, Robert, Edward. From five daughters - Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Jean - at least he did not demand a fight for the presidency. But they were also required to be Kennedys.
Rosemary was the first to leave the race: in 1941, in order to cure a mental disorder, she underwent a lobotomy. And although she died in 2005, it is difficult to call it life - 64 years in a madhouse. The eldest son, Joseph, on whom his father made a bet, being a military pilot, died in 1944 during a flight over the English Channel. Four years later, Kathleen also crashed in a plane crash. Charismatic, charming and intelligent, John was killed in 1963 during a visit to Dallas. He just became president, the youngest president of the United States. The third son, Robert, was shot during the 1968 election campaign. Old Joseph Patrick planned that his three sons - John, Robert and Edward - would rule the country, replacing each other, from 1960 to 1984. Alas! The last of the brothers, Edward, was a senator for many years, but will never become president: he died in 2009. Joseph Patrick outlived Robert by a year, but in fact he began to fade back in 1961, after John's election victory: he had a stroke, from the consequences of which he never recovered.

Young heirs

The old Kennedy generation is practically gone, only Jean, who bears the simple surname Smith, is alive. She is involved in social work and in the 1990s was the US Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Ireland. The daughter of Eunice Kennedy and Robert Sargent Shriver, Maria Shriver became a well-known journalist and won prestigious awards. John's daughter Caroline is known as a lawyer and the author of two books on jurisprudence. Robert's son Robert Francis is a lawyer who works in environmental law. Robert Rory's daughter is an award-winning film director. Sons Joseph and Christopher are engaged in business and politics, Douglas and Matthew - journalism and writing. Daughter Kathleen is a politician and lawyer, daughters Mary-Kerry and Mary-Courtney are involved in community service. But not all of the older Kennedys' children are alive.
In 1984, Robert's son David died of a cocaine overdose. In 1997, Michael died skiing in the mountains. The son of John F. Kennedy, John Jr., also passed away. In 1999, he crashed in his own plane along with his wife Carolyn and her sister Lorraine. John was on his way to his cousin's wedding. The plane crashed into the ocean.

On July 16, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. tragically died in a plane crash. And 36 years ago, his father, US President John F. Kennedy, was shot dead in Dallas. But evil fate began to haunt the Kennedy family much earlier: members of America's most influential political clan rarely died a natural death.
Highway Patricks
Biographers do not like to remember the first of the Kennedys to set foot on American soil: they say he was not the best person. Little is known about Patrick Kennedy. He was born in Ireland, in County Wexford, in 1823 and was a peasant. Like many of his compatriots, Patrick fled from the terrible famine that struck Ireland in 1840 to America. On the ship, he met a girl named Mary Joanna and fell in love with her at first sight. They had five children on American soil.
The heir to the family was Patrick Joseph, who died 35 years old, leaving his wife a good inheritance. True, it is generally accepted that after his death, the wife was left with four children in her arms and without a single cent in her pocket. But this is the official version. According to unofficial information, there was money in the family, and they were earned by the family business - robbery on the highway.
Since then things have progressed. The next Kennedy died quite a wealthy man and the owner of his own bank. Thus, his son, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, had money from birth. But he needed not just money, but a lot of money. After graduating from Harvard University, he became president of a bank at the age of 25. Father-in-law, the mayor of Boston, helped his son-in-law avoid being drafted into the army in 1917 by giving him a position in a warship building company. When the First World War ended, the manager of a military plant retrained as a broker. Colleagues spoke of him extremely badly, but recognized that Joseph Patrick knew how to make money. Capital growth was helped by two circumstances. In the mid-1920s, Kennedy got fed up with the stock exchange and took all his money from there, investing it in Hollywood. And from 1920 to 1933, the main profits for Joseph Patrick were given by the illegal trade in alcohol. On the eve of the second world clan, the Kennedys were considered the second richest family in the world (after the Rockefellers).
The Puritan wife believed that sex was needed only to have children. Nine times in a lifetime? For Joseph Patrick, this was too little, he began to seek solace on the side. He had many actress mistresses, including Gloria Swanson, who became a movie star in his own studio. He slept with his secretary Jeanette de Rozier and constantly used the services of prostitutes.
Such was Joseph Patrick Kennedy, the father of the future US president. It is he and his wife Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald who are considered the founders of the Kennedy clan. And it was Joseph Patrick, according to the Kennedys themselves, who brought the curse on his children.

ALEXEY ALEKSEEV

Dangerous surname

Year	Name	Event
1941	Rosemary Kennedy, daughter	Placed for the rest of her life in a closed
	Joseph and Rose	psychiatric hospital for
		mental retardation
1943	John Fitzgerald	Torpedo boat under it
	Kennedy	sunk in the area
		Solomon Islands. Kennedy
		managed to escape and save the members
		crew
1944	Joseph P.	Died in car accident aged
	Kennedy Jr., son	29 years
	Joseph and Rose
1948	Kathleen Kennedy, daughter	Died in a plane crash in
	Joseph and Rose	age 28
1963	Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, son	Born prematurely, died at
	John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline	age 3 months
1963	John Fitzgerald	Killed in Dallas at age 46
	Kennedy, son of Joseph and
	Rose, 35th President of the United States
1968	Robert Fitzgerald	Killed in Los Angeles aged 42
	Kennedy, son of Joseph and	years
	Rose
1969	Edward Michael Kennedy, son	Got into a car accident
	Joseph and Rose	Dyke bridge near the island
		Chappaquiddick (Massachusetts).
		Saved from falling into the water
		car and left for dead
		passenger - his personal
		Mary Jo Kopechne's assistant
1973	Edward Kennedy Jr.	Survived a leg amputation due to
	son of Edward	cancer
1973	Joseph Kennedy, son	Got into a car accident
	Roberta	as a result of which the passenger
		the car remained paralyzed
		for life
1984	David Kennedy, son	Died of a drug overdose
	Roberta
1986	Patrick Kennedy, son	Completed cocaine treatment
	Edward	dependencies
1991	William Kennedy Smith,	Accused of rape, on trial
	nephew of Edward	found not guilty
1997	Michael Kennedy, son	Died skiing.
	Roberta	Charged with unlawful association with
		teenage girl working
		baby-sitter in his family
1999	John Fitzgerald	Died in a plane crash with
	Kennedy Jr., son	wife Caroline Bissett and
	John F. Kennedy	sister-in-law Lauren Bissett

Signatures
Joseph and Rose Kennedy with nine children. 1938 From left to right sitting - Eunice, Jean, Edward (in the arms of his father), Patricia, Kathleen (died in a plane crash), standing - Rosemary (died in a mental hospital), Robert (shot), John (shot), mother, Joseph Jr. (exploded in airplane).
Senator Robert F. Kennedy with his wife and children. Sixth from right, David, died of a drug overdose. Third left - Michael, crashed while skiing.
The Kennedy brothers, 1962 Left to right: John, Robert, Edward. John became president and was assassinated. Robert was about to run for president and was assassinated. Edward's presidential plans were interrupted by a loud scandal
Exactly 30 years ago, Senator Edward Kennedy escaped from a car that fell into the water, leaving his assistant and mistress, Mary Jo Kopechne, to die (on cut)
John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy after the baptism of their son, John Fitzgerald Jr. Both father and son faced a tragic death.
Prior to becoming Attorney General in his brother's presidential administration, Robert Kennedy didn't know what to do. Pictured: Robert (left) with Chief Justice William Douglas in Stalingrad. 1955
The last victims of the birth curse: John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife, Caroline Bissett. Died in a plane crash on July 16, 1999
Bill Clinton with John Kennedy Jr. Clinton always considered his father his ideal and the best president in the history of America. On Friday, the current US president attended a memorial service for the tragically dead Kennedy Jr., his wife Caroline Bissett and sister-in-law Lauren Bissett.
At the house of John F. Kennedy Jr. in Manhattan. The last time America grieved so much for Princess Diana.

Kennedy's son crashed. Photos of the Kennedy family. Tragedy and greatness of one American family

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