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.

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 act 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
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.

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.

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.

Married speculator by calculation. 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 stated that " the Jews themselves are to blame for Hitler's cruelty", and then he urged not to fight the Nazis at all, 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, 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 - the root crops 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, was really impressive: 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.