John F. Kennedy
The son of a rich Irish family and a torpedo-boat commander in the Pacific whose boat was cut in two by a Japanese destroyer — he swam his crew out. At forty-three he became the youngest man elected president of the United States and the first Catholic in the office. His three years held the failure at the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 when the world stood a week from nuclear war, the partial test-ban treaty, the Peace Corps and the promise to land a man on the Moon before the decade was out. He came to civil rights late and cautiously, and the act itself was passed after his death. He was shot in Dallas on 22 November 1963.
He was born in Brookline near Boston on 29 May 1917 at 15:00 Eastern time; the hour is taken from his birth certificate.