The Kennedy family was one of the strongest clans in America. Presidents, senators, prominent politicians - members of the clan could boast of an excellent career. But, alas, Kennedy's career did not go for the future. Family members died in car accidents, at the hands of murderers, under other unexpected circumstances. It was as if a curse had come over them. According to rumors, it was the head of the clan, Joe Kennedy, who insulted the old rebbe, who cast the spell. And since then, Kennedy did not know happiness.

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Rosemary Kennedy- lobotomy

Rosemary, daughter of Joe Kennedy and sister of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was born with serious mental problems. Since childhood, she lagged behind her peers in development. Rosemary spent her childhood in hospitals and boarding schools, and then was sent to a monastery. However, she behaved violently, and constantly ran away from the monastery. When she was 23, her father, Joe Kennedy, decided to resort to the last resort and allowed her daughter to have a lobotomy. However, the effect was negative: Rosemary lost the ability to move and speak. Gradually, the ability to stand on her feet returned to her, but her hands still remained inactive. Rosemary Kennedy lived out her days in strict isolation and died in 2005.

Joe Kennedy Jr.- exploded plane

Joseph Patrick Kennedy was the eldest son of Joe and Rose Kennedy, and the elder brother of the future president. In 1942, after dropping out of law school, he volunteered for the army, becoming a pilot in the navy. Alas, in 1944, during the execution of another mission, lightning hit Joe Kennedy's plane. The pilot is dead.

Kathleen Kennedy- plane crash

Kathleen Kennedy, the elder sister of President John F. Kennedy, dreamed of joining the family of British aristocrats since childhood. Shortly after her London debut, she met Billy Hartington, the future Duke of Devonshire. They got married, despite the opposition of the Kennedy family: after all, the groom was a Protestant, and they were Catholics. Alas, soon Hartington died, participating in the fighting in France. Immediately after that, Kathleen began an affair with the next aristocrat, Count Peter Fitzwilliam, who was married and was going to leave his family for Kathleen. However, the wedding never took place: when the couple flew from Paris to Cannes on Fitzwilliam's private plane, the plane crashed due to bad weather conditions. Kathleen and her fiancé are dead.

Patrick Bouvier Kennedy- died 2 days after premature birth

President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline had problems having children. In 1955, Jacqueline had a miscarriage, in 1956 she gave birth to a dead child. Two successful pregnancies followed. In 1963 she was pregnant for the third time. However, the pregnancy failed again. The boy, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, was born in August 1963, three weeks premature and died two days later from respiratory failure.

John Kennedy- murder

In November 1963, John F. Kennedy actively campaigned for the presidency, seeking reelection for a second term. But this did not happen. On Friday, November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas. The assassination of the president shocked all of America and subsequently became one of the most striking evidence of the existence of the "curse of the Kennedy clan."

Ted Kennedy- random rescue

Senator Ted Kennedy, younger son of Joe Kennedy and younger brother of the president, lived to a ripe old age. But the curse followed close behind him. In 1964, the private plane in which Ted was flying crashed. The pilot and assistant to Kennedy died, but he himself survived, although he spent many months in the hospital. And five years later, in 1969, Ted Kennedy's car fell off the bridge. His passenger died, but Ted himself managed to swim out. Looks like Ted Kennedy is one of the few family members who knows how to cheat death.

Robert Kennedy- murder

Robert Kennedy, John's brother, was the US Attorney General and the nation's youngest senator. In 1968, he announced his candidacy for the presidency. On June 5, 1968, he won a resounding victory in the California presidential primaries. However, he could only enjoy this for a few hours: on the same day, he was shot dead by a 22-year-old Palestinian Seran Serhan, who said that in this way he took revenge on Robert Kennedy for his public support of Israel.

Joseph P. Kennedy II- car accident

Joseph Patrick Kennedy, son of Robert and Jacqueline Kennedy, had a terrible accident in 1973. Oddly enough, he himself got out of it unharmed, but his passengers were badly injured. His brother David Kennedy was seriously injured, because of which he got hooked on painkillers and soon died, and passenger Pamela Berkley remained completely paralyzed for life. It is difficult to say how lucky Joseph himself was. Perhaps the thought that he had ruined the lives of two people, including his brother, with his clumsiness behind the wheel, became his worst curse.

Ted Kennedy Jr.- leg amputation

Ted Kennedy Jr., son of Edward, nephew of John and Robert Kennedy, developed osteosarcoma at the age of 12. There was almost no hope, and they agreed to subject the boy to experimental treatment with methotrexate. He became a guinea pig, on which doctors selected the correct dosage of the drug. Fortunately, Ted Jr. was lucky - he managed to survive, however, having lost one leg. Of course, he had to forget about the traditional career of a public politician for the Kennedy family, but he managed to become a good lawyer and even took part in political activities - but, of course, not as brightly and actively as his relatives.

David Kennedy- died of a drug overdose

David Anthony Kennedy was the fourth son of President Robert Kennedy. It was he who was in the car with Joseph Kennedy II when he had an accident. David was seriously injured, and doctors gave him drugs to numb the pain. Soon he could no longer do without them. After the hospital, he quickly switched from painkillers to heroin. In 1976 and 1978, doctors struggled to pump it out after overdoses. In 1985, another heroin overdose became fatal for David.

Michael LeMoyne Kennedy- death on the ski slope

Michael LeMoyne Kennedy was the sixth child of Robert Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy. In December 1997, 39-year-old Michael went to the prestigious Aspren ski resort in Colorado. He did not expect that he would find his death here. On December 31, 1997, while skiing, LeMoyne ran into a tree at high speed. He was taken to the hospital, where he soon died from his injuries.

John F. Kennedy, Jr.- plane crash

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., a well-known journalist and lawyer, by 1999 was the only living child of President John F. Kennedy. On July 16, 1999, he took the wheel of his private jet, along with his wife Caroline and her sister, on their way to the wedding of his cousin Rory Kennedy. But the plane did not make it to its destination, crashing off Martha's Vineyard, on the Atlantic coast of Massachusetts. None of those on board survived.

Kara Kennedy- heart attack

Kara Ann Kennedy was the eldest daughter of Senator Ted Kennedy. In 2002, at the age of 42, she was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. Kara was preparing to die, but her father Ted Kennedy, who knew how to defeat the old woman with a scythe, found a surgeon who agreed to operate on Kara. He risked not in vain - the woman survived and even got rid of cancer. And yet, Kara died a few years later - in 2011, she died from an unexpected heart attack. This time, her father did not have time to come to her aid.

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 that.
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

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 had fallen into the water, leaving his assistant and mistress, Mary Jo Kopechne, to die.
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.

The most noble collection of famous American politicians and tycoons. However, at the origins of such a respectable family is an ordinary Irish peasant who, like most adventurers in the 19th century, fled from home to the New World in search of life. Patrick Joseph Kennedy died early, without amassing much wealth, but he left five children on American soil, who also tried with all their might to become masters of life. Leadership qualities have become a hallmark of the Kennedy family. And the name Patrick Joseph is family, in honor of the father-patriarch, as his grateful descendants called the Irishman.

The father of the future US president was also Joseph Patrick. This man fulfilled the dream of his ancestor, making his family one of the richest in the country along with the Rockefeller clan. He "rose" on the illegal trade in alcohol during the years of Prohibition and on investments in Hollywood films. Business thus prospered, but Kennedy's life left much to be desired. With his wife, who bore him nine children, he did not find common interests and disappeared either from movie stars or from prostitutes. Joseph Patrick's daughters were also not particularly pleased. One of them, Rosemary, was committed to a psychiatric clinic because of her violent temper, the other, Kathleen, died in a plane crash. But Kennedy Sr. endured these family tragedies relatively steadfastly. But when, during the Second World War, his favorite and heir Joseph Jr. exploded in a military plane during the Second World War, his father uttered words that turned out to be prophetic for the whole family: “It looks like a curse hung over our family.”

The further history of the Kennedy family became one bright and terrible illustration of this prophecy. The second son of Kennedy Sr., the handsome John Fitzgerald, who achieved not only the presidency of America, but also popular love, was shot dead after a three-year reign, killed by an unknown person (presumably Lee Harvey Oswald) during the presidential solemn procession through the streets of Dallas. His brother Robert, a senator who soon after his brother's death became the most likely candidate for the presidency, was mortally wounded in the Ambassador Hotel, and there are still many whites in the history of his death.

The chain of mysterious deaths dragged on as the grandchildren of Joseph Kennedy, who predicted the curse of his family, grew up. Two of Robert's sons died while still young. President Kennedy's son, John Fitzgerald Jr., like his aunt and uncle, died in a plane crash along with his wife and sister-in-law. And recently, in May 2012, sad news came again from the Kennedy family: under strange circumstances, the wife of Robert Jr., architect Mary Kennedy, committed suicide.

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.

May 29 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the most famous American presidents, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He led the country for just over two years, but managed to be remembered for both brilliant victories and deafening failures. Kennedy became not only a model of a political leader, but also an icon of style. After the president's assassination, his relatives continue to influence American politics. traced the history of the legendary dynasty and its most stellar representative.

Potato Famine Refugees

It was the invisible Phytophthora infestans in 1845 that potato tubers all over Ireland began to rot right in the ground, depriving the peasants enslaved by the British of the only source of income. At first, the government tried to provide assistance to the victims, but the money ran out almost immediately.

Deprived of income from potatoes, English and Scottish landowners inflated the rental prices of their Irish land. The cold winter aggravated the situation: the hungry and freezing peasants were literally mowed down by epidemics of scurvy, typhus and dysentery. Tens of thousands of Irish people fled the country. Among those who left was and.

He got to American Boston, where he got a job as a cooper (barrel maker) - the work allowed him to maintain a tolerable standard of living.

clipped wings

Patrick's son already owned three saloons, but his grandson, Joseph, achieved impressive success: he actively invested in stocks, real estate, cinema and became fabulously rich. Rumor has it that he even supplied bootleggers with alcohol during the Prohibition years.

Joseph married the daughter of the mayor of Boston and met the president. This allowed him to enter big politics: Kennedy became the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the US ambassador to the UK.

Everything seemed to be going well, but Joseph was summed up by his position during the Second World War. He opposed US intervention in the conflict and pushed for better relations with Nazi Germany. In addition, the ambassador extremely resented the British prime minister, tirelessly predicting defeat for the kingdom.

Photo: J. A. Hampton / Topical Press Agency / Getty Images

His diplomatic career was interrupted, his political reputation was undermined, but Joseph did not give up: the children - four boys and five girls - became his instruments of influence. From childhood, they were taught to stick to each other and remember that the family is above all.

Joseph encouraged the spirit of competition between the boys and hoped that the eldest son, Joe, would make a political career. But Joe, who served as a naval pilot, died in the war - they say that he took on increasingly difficult tasks precisely because of a childish desire to prove his superiority over his sailor brother. After the tragedy, Joseph decided that it was John who should become an influential politician.

After the war, using connections and money, the patriarch of the Kennedy family achieved wide coverage of John's military exploits: the story of how the sailors of the torpedo boat sunk by the Japanese escaped under his command was printed by the New Yorker magazine and sold 100,000 copies. Kennedy Jr. constantly appeared on TV, showed his family to voters, became a kind of star. “The Kennedy family forever blurred the line between politician and celebrity,” said writer Vincent Bzdek.

Joseph's calculation was justified: John F. Kennedy was elected to the House of Representatives, then to the Senate, in 1960 he defeated, which, against the background of a young and radiant Democrat, seemed to be an artifact of a bygone era, and finally took the Oval Office in the White House.

Legendary person

"The Greatest President", "Best Man Ever", "God, how we miss him!" - such inscriptions are most often found in the memorial book of the Sixth Floor Museum in the same building in Dallas, Texas, from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot at President Kennedy.

Kennedy was indeed the first in many ways: the first president born in the 20th century, the first young World War II veteran in the White House, the first Catholic president, the youngest head of state in history. He came to power with a promise to break with the stagnation of the previous eight years, which had passed under the sign of a military-glorious but passive Republican general.

Kennedy had had enough failures: a failed invasion of Cuba, a lot of stalled bills in Congress. Meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1961 in Vienna is still considered a model of national humiliation in the United States. “Worst event in my life. He just tore me, ”the president himself recalled.

Nevertheless, he was remembered not for failures and not even for indisputable successes, such as ending the Caribbean crisis, when the world risked plunging into the abyss of nuclear war. As The Atlantic writer Alan Brinkley writes, "Kennedy reminds us of a time when the possibilities of the nation seemed limitless, when the future seemed bright, when Americans believed they could solve difficult problems and do great things."

It was during his reign that he formulated: “The United States needs Great Purpose. We act as if our goal is to sit by the pools and contemplate our swollen bellies. The main thing is not that Great Purpose was correctly formulated, the main thing is that it exists and we go towards it.” This point of view was fully consistent with Kennedy's attitude: in 1961, in his famous speech, he announced the entry of the United States into the space race, the final point of which was to send an expedition to the moon.

It was under him that many of the Great Society laws were formulated, which put an end to segregation and allowed the United States to become a modern multicultural and multiethnic society. His sayings - such as "Don't ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" - quickly became winged.

From the previous owners of the White House, Kennedy differed even in appearance. His dressing skills have been admired since his first appearance on TV: John looked great in the Oval Office, on the golf course, and surrounded by family.

"The phrase 'style icon' is hackneyed, but in Kennedy's case, it's practically part of his name," wrote Mr. porter. “Try to find a bad photo of Kennedy. Come on, we'll wait. Well, see? None!" - admired the author.

No matter how paradoxical it may sound, but Kennedy was finally immortalized by his assassination in 1963: 60 percent of Americans still believe that the president fell victim not to a lone Lee Harvey Oswald, but to mysterious conspirators. Gossip about the causes of his death is still ongoing.

Endurance and the Curse of an Eternal Dynasty

After John's death, the attention of the nation was riveted on his younger brother Robert, who was Attorney General during the presidency of a relative. In 1968, he was on the verge of winning the primaries and had every chance to lead the country, but was killed by a Palestinian, Serhan Serhan Bishara, who was dissatisfied with the politician's pro-Israeli views.

After the death of naval pilot Joe and the assassinations of John and Robert, people started talking about the "Kennedy curse", which even has a separate page on the English Wikipedia: from 1944 to the present day, eight members of a famous family died an unnatural death.

In 1969, Ted Kennedy, the only surviving son of the patriarch of the Joseph family, fell into the abyss from a bridge while driving a car. He miraculously survived, and the girlfriend who was sitting next to him died. He was further pursued by failures: an unhappy marriage, amputation of the leg of one of his sons due to a cancerous tumor, alcoholism and drug addiction of another. Nevertheless, he spent 47 years as a senator, lived until 2009, and by the end of his life became a prominent voice of American progressivism.

The younger generation is also following in the footsteps of their ancestors: John F. Kennedy's 36-year-old great-nephew Joseph III was elected Congressman from Massachusetts, 24-year-old Jack Schlosberg, the great-grandson of the legendary president, also hints at a desire to enter politics. It is possible that in the future America will still hear the slogan "Kennedy for President!", and the representative of the famous dynasty will once again rise to the top of the American political Olympus.