1944 |
May 6: Kathleen marries a British lord, William Cavendish.
August 12: Joe Jr. dies on a secret mission flying over the English Channel. The Naval Cross will be awarded posthumously. Joe Sr. begins to transfer his ambitions to his second son.
September 9: William Cavendish is killed in battle against the Germans. Kathleen Kennedy is widowed after only four months of marriage.
November: Robert Kennedy enrolls in Harvard College. |
1945 |
Out of the military, Jack begins a career as a journalist, reporting on the charter for the new United Nations in San Francisco and on the British Parliament.
November: Joe Sr. buys Chicago's Merchandise Mart, the largest privately-owned building in the world. |
1946 |
February: Robert F. Kennedy begins a tour of duty aboard the U.S.S. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.
April: Jack announces that he will run for Massachusetts' 11th Congressional district seat, left vacant by once-again-mayor James Michael Curley. His grandfather, John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, who held the seat a half-century earlier, campaigns with him. Once Kennedy wins the primary, he is a shoo-in for the seat in Democratic Boston. He will represent his district for the next six years. |
1947 |
May 13: Kathleen is killed in a plane crash over southern France.
Fall: Jack becomes ill in London. He is diagnosed with Addison's disease, a hormonal disorder that causes fatigue and compromises the immune system. |
1948 |
Robert Kennedy graduates from Harvard College and enters law school at the University of Virginia. |
1950 |
John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald dies.
Robert Kennedy marries Ethel Skakel.
Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy enters Harvard College. |
1951 |
May: Ted is caught cheating on an exam and is expelled from Harvard. He enlists in the Army and will serve for the next 16 months.
July 4: Kathleen Hartington Kennedy is born to Robert and Ethel. She is Joe and Rose's first grandchild. Robert and Ethel will have 10 more children. |
1952 |
Jack wins a place in the United States Senate, unseating the descendant of a Boston Brahmin family, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. Jack's brother Robert manages the campaign. |
1953 |
January: Robert Kennedy becomes assistant counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations chaired by Joseph McCarthy.
May 23: Eunice Kennedy marries Robert Sargent Shriver Jr.
September 12: Jack marries Jacqueline Bouvier. |
1954 |
April 24: Patricia Kennedy marries Peter Lawford.
October 21: Jack nearly dies during a major spinal operation. A second operation, four months later, will also have complications. During his convalescence, he will write Profiles in Courage, published in 1956.
May 19: Jean Ann Kennedy marries Stephen Edward Smith.
June: Ted graduates from Harvard and enrolls in the University of Virginia Law School.
August: Adlai Stevenson throws the choice of a running mate to the Democratic convention. Senator Kennedy is a candidate, but Estes Kefauver is chosen.
Jacqueline Kennedy gives birth prematurely to a stillborn daughter. Jack is in France. |
1957 |
Profiles in Courage wins the Pulitzer Prize for biography.
The Senate Rackets Committee investigates organized labor. Jack Kennedy is a member; Robert Kennedy is the chief counsel.
As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jack Kennedy argues for the independence of Algeria from France.
November 27: Daughter Caroline Bouvier Kennedy is born to Jacqueline and Jack Kennedy. |
1958 |
November 4: Jack is re-elected to the Senate.
November 29: Ted Kennedy marries Virginia Joan Bennett. |
1960 |
January: Jack announces his candidacy for the presidency. The viability of a Catholic candidate is tested in state primaries throughout the year.
July: Jack Kennedy wins the nomination for president at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles.
September 26: Kennedy debates Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the first of four televised meetings.
November 8: John F. Kennedy is elected the 35th president of the U.S. He is the youngest president ever to be elected -- and the first Roman Catholic.
November 25: John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. is born to Jacqueline and Jack Kennedy. |
1961 |
January: Joe Kennedy insists that Robert F. Kennedy be given a cabinet appointment; Robert is named attorney general.
In his inaugural address, Jack Kennedy urges Americans, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
At a time of deep Cold War fears, Jack is counseled on a counterinsurgency plan against Fidel Castro's Communist government in Cuba.
March: President Kennedy signs into law the creation of the Peace Corps.
April 16-18: The U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba is a failure.
May 25: President Kennedy announces his goal to land a man on the moon and return him to earth before the end of the decade, and before the Soviets do.
May 29: President Kennedy meets Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna. The meeting ends badly.
August: The Soviets build a dividing wall in the German city of Berlin.
December 19: Joe Sr. suffers a stroke. He is paralyzed and will remain unable to speak for the last eight years of his life. |
1962 |
March: Ted resigns as assistant district attorney in Suffolk County and announces his candidacy for his brother Jack's unexpired Senate seat.
May 19: At President Kennedy's 45th birthday party at Madison Square Garden, Marilyn Monroe sings a breathless "Happy Birthday" to the president.
September: James Meredith, the first black student to enroll, arrives at the University of Mississippi. Local protesters stridently oppose school desegregation. On orders of attorney general Robert Kennedy, three hundred federal marshals accompany Meredith; a deadly riot breaks out.
October: The discovery of Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba engulfs the presidency in crisis. After numerous rounds of public and private diplomacy, the Cuban Missile Crisis is resolved. The Soviets will remove their missiles, and the United States will remove similar missiles from Turkey in the near future.
November 6: The people of Massachusetts elect Ted Kennedy to the U.S. Senate. |
1963 |
June: President Kennedy calls for a moratorium on nuclear weapons tests.
Kennedy gives a national television address on civil rights.
August 7: A third child, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, is born to the President and First Lady; he will live only two days.
August 25: Robert Kennedy declares his candidacy for a U.S. Senate seat for New York held by Republican Kenneth Keating. He will resign as attorney general weeks later.
November 22: President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson takes the oath of office on Air Force One.
November 29: Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren chairs a commission established to investigate the death of President Kennedy. |
1964 |
June: Senator Ted Kennedy's back is broken in a plane crash that kills his aide and the pilot.
September 24: The Warren Commission report concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy.
October: Pursuit of Justice by Robert Kennedy is published.
November 3: Lyndon Johnson is elected president; Robert Kennedy is elected to the Senate. |
1966 |
February: Patricia Kennedy divorces Peter Lawford.
June: On one of his many foreign trips, Senator Robert Kennedy addresses students in racially segregated South Africa, and emphasizes "the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings."
December 8: Robert Kennedy announces the creation of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, a private-public partnership designed to address poverty in a Brooklyn, New York neighborhood. |
1967 |
April: Traveling through the Mississippi delta, Robert Kennedy is confronted with extreme poverty in rural America. |
1968 |
March: After much deliberation, Robert Kennedy announces his candidacy for the presidency. Although late to the race, he wins primaries in Washington, D.C., Indiana, Nebraska, and South Dakota.
June 5: After winning the California primary, Robert Kennedy is shot in Los Angeles; he dies the next day. The Los Angeles Police Department determines that Sirhan Sirhan, a deranged Palestinian, acted on his own.
July: Eunice Kennedy Shriver convenes the first Special Olympics for people with mental retardation in Chicago's Soldiers Field. The organization quickly expands and by 2003 will boast 1 million participants in more than 150 nations. |
1969 |
July 18: Following an appreciation party for volunteers on Robert Kennedy's campaign, Senator Ted Kennedy drives his car off a bridge at Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts. Kennedy manages to escape; his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, does not. Kennedy will not report the accident for hours.
July 25: Ted Kennedy delivers a national television address to explain his actions at Chappaquiddick.
November 18: Joe Sr. dies. He is survived by five of his nine children and by his wife Rose. |
1970 |
November 3: Ted Kennedy is reelected to the Senate, but loses his post as Majority Whip. He chairs the Senate Health Committee. |
1979 |
November: Ted Kennedy announces his candidacy for the 1980 presidential election. |
1980 |
January-August: Ted Kennedy wins Democratic primaries in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, California, New Mexico, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and New Jersey. The rest go to the incumbent, President Jimmy Carter.
August: In an emotional speech to the Democratic national convention, Ted withdraws his bid for the presidency. |
1982 |
December: Ted Kennedy announces he will not run for president in 1984. After 24 years of marriage, he divorces his wife Joan. |
1985 |
December: Ted Kennedy announces he will not be a candidate for President in 1988. |
1987 |
Joseph Patrick Kennedy II, son of Robert Kennedy, is elected to Congress from the 8th District of Massachusetts. He will serve until 1999, when he steps down to run the Citizens Energy Corporation, a non-profit organization negotiating affordable energy for the poor. |
1992 |
Ted Kennedy marries Victoria Reggie. |
1994 |
Ted Kennedy's son, Patrick Joseph Kennedy, is elected to Congress from Rhode Island's First District. He still serves in 2003. |
1995 |
January 18: Robert Kennedy's oldest child, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, is sworn in as lieutenant governor of Maryland. Her bid to be Maryland's governor in 2002 will fail.
January 22: Family matriarch Rose Kennedy dies, just a few months short of her 105th birthday. |
1999 |
July 16: En route to the wedding of cousin Rory Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Jr. and his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy die in an airplane accident off the coast of Massachusetts. |
