35th President of the United States.

Having served in the US navy during the Second World War, Kennedy entered the political arena. A Democrat, he won the 1960 presidential election, becoming the first Roman Catholic, and the youngest president, ever elected.

Kennedy's domestic reform programme, the New Frontier, promised income tax cuts and sweeping civil rights measures. His proposals received little support from Congress however, and many were not implemented.

The new president was almost immediately caught up in foreign affairs crises. The first was the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles trained and aided by the CIA in 1961. Escalating tension between the United States and the Soviet Union culminated in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. In August 1963 tension between the two countries was eased with a treaty prohibiting the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

Kennedy also made the contentious decision to send American soldiers and other assistance to South Vietnam in a bid to combat the spread of communism.

On 22 November 1963 President Kennedy was shot as his motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas. His death shocked the nation. Subsequent revelations about his powerful family and personal life have tainted his image but the sense of a youthful, idealistic administration remains powerful.