What Manner of Man is Made Queasy by JKF on Church and State?

Sen. John Kennedy's presidential campaign speech to the Great Houston Ministerial Association in September 1960 is in the news over 50 years later, in the context of presidential politics. The speech is, of course, on YouTube in the early 21st century.

About a minute into the speech, Kennedy said:

"Because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected president, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured, perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again — not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me — but what kind of America I believe in.

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

"I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all."

Once Upon a Lothario

It doesn't take much to get President Kennedy in the news, even though he's been dead for nearly 50 years. Did President McKinley have such a hold on the popular imagination in 1950? As well liked as McKinley was before his assassination, probably not.

Whatever the reason for the appeal, Kennedy's still got it. Note this photo taken during the summer of 2011 at Arlington National Cemetery. It depicts the crowd at the graves of the President and Mrs. Kennedy and two of their children. Not many other graves -- if any -- get this kind of attention, even at Arlington.

Yet another book about JKF will go on sale on Wednesday, but it's already in the news. The following is a sampling of headlines inspired on Monday by Once Upon a Secret by Mimi Alford.

Former intern: Book details Kennedy affair (CNN International)

Sex, drugs and JFK: memoir of a White House intern (The Independent)

Book details JFK affair with teen White House intern (Inquirer.net)

Grandmother details her teenage affair with JFK as a White House intern (The Australian)

Author says she was JFK's teen mistress (Baltimore Sun)

Former White House intern reveals JFK affair (TVNZ)

In New Book, Former White House Intern Details Her Alleged Affair With JFK (NPR)

5 Reasons JFK Was a Creepy, Lecherous Bastard (Gothamist)

Kennedy's Inaugural Address

John Kennedy uttered a number of memorable phrases in his inaugural address on January 20, 1961: "pay any price, bear any burden," "a long twilight struggle" and of course "ask not what your country can do for you..."

The speech was more than just a string of memorable sound bites, however. As a work of rhetoric, it's rightly considered a soaring masterpiece, one of the best of the presidential inaugurals (though none will likely ever best Lincoln's Second Inaugural). And, at about 14 minutes, worth listening to in its entirety from time to time.

The Kennedy Assassination, As Told on TV

November 22 is one of the four presidential assassination anniversaries -- the others are April 14, July 2 and September 6 -- and the only one still in living memory, as it will be for a few more decades. That day in 1963 was also the only time that a president was shot and killed on the same day; Lincoln died the next day, while Garfield and McKinley lingered considerably longer.

Word of Lincoln, Garfield and even McKinley's assassination traveled by telegraph, and from there into print, but by the time Kennedy died, new media had arisen to spread the awful news.

CBS coverage.

NBC coverage.



ABC coverage.

Presidential Relics

They might be dead, but that doesn't keep dead presidents from making money -- for purveyors of their relics, that is. On December 1, Dallas-based Heritage Auctions will be selling five architectural drawing tools once belonging to Thomas Jefferson, which the company says are expected to fetch $45,000 or more.

The pieces have been consigned by descendants of James Monroe. “The Monroe and Jefferson families were closely intertwined in Virginia society and politics, and the Monroes became the custodians of various items originally owned by Thomas Jefferson,” notes Tom Slater, director of historical auctions at Heritage, in a statement. “A number went to Monticello and other Virginia museums, but this choice grouping remained in private hands, which has afforded us this amazing opportunity to bring it to auction.”

Besides the Jefferson items, also for sale at the same time are the last rocking chair John F. Kennedy was known to have sat in; a pair of glass decanters owned by George Washington; a portrait cameo brooch of Zachary Taylor, owned by Taylor and consigned by a direct descendant; James Monroe's own ceramic meat platter in the "Landing of Lafayette" pattern, commemorating Lafayette's triumphal visit to America in 1824, while Monroe was president; and several china pieces belonging to Mary Todd Lincoln, which she sold to pay off debt after her husband's death.

Separately, the Raab Collection, a historic documents dealer in Philadelphia, is selling a reel-to-reel tape made aboard Air Force One the day John Kennedy was assassinated, which it says is more than 30 minutes longer than a version at the National Archives. The Raab Collection bought the tape from the estate of Army Gen. Chester "Ted" Clifton Jr., who served as the senior military aide to Kennedy, and now wants to sell it for $500,000.

The Day After the 1960 Election

After presidential elections come concession speeches from the losers and the victory speeches from the winners -- usually. In the case of a particularly close election still within living memory, 1960, things weren't quite so simple. By the end of election day that year, no one was sure yet who had won. Early in the morning on November 9, Vice President Richard Nixon spoke to his supporters but did not concede, though he did note that things weren't trending his way.

Writing in 1960: LBJ vs. JKF vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies, David Pietrusza takes the story from there: "At 9:45 a.m. PST Herb Klein -- not Richard Nixon -- stood before the cameras to announce that the great chase had ended, just as he -- not Richard Nixon -- had so casually announced it had begun ten months earlier...

"Klein read Richard Nixon's terse concession -- a telegram Nixon had already sent to Kennedy: 'I want to repeat through this wire congratulations and the best wishes I extended to you on television last night. I know that you will have the united support of all Americans as you lead the nation in the cause of peace and freedom in the next four years.' "

Kennedy gave his victory speech on television that day at the Hyannis Armory, mentioning Nixon's telegram as well as one from President Eisenhower.

Eleanor Mondale and Kara Kennedy

RIP, Eleanor Mondale Poling, daughter of Vice President Walter Mondale and Joan Mondale. January 19, 1960 - September 17, 2011.

RIP, Kara Kennedy Allen, niece of President John Kennedy. February 27, 1960 - September 16, 2011.

The Kennedy Center Opens

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, opened 40 years ago today, with the premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass.

According to the Kennedy Center web site, "Two months after President Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Congress designated the National Cultural Center (designed by Edward Durell Stone) as a "living memorial" to Kennedy, and authorized $23 million to help build what was now known as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

"Fundraising continued at a swift pace -- with much help coming from the Friends of the Kennedy Center volunteers, who fanned out across the nation to attract private support -- and nations around the world began donating funds, building materials, and artworks to assist in the project's completion. In December 1965, President Lyndon Johnson turned the first shovelful of earth at the Center's construction site, using the same gold-plated spade that had been used in the groundbreaking ceremonies for both the Lincoln Memorial in 1914 and the Jefferson Memorial in 1938."

December 30, 1963:Congress Authorizes the Kennedy Half

The Kennedy half dollar coin was authorized by Congress on December 30, 1963, barely a month after the president was murdered, to replace the Benjamin Franklin half dollar, which had only been minted since 1948. Gilroy Roberts, chief engraver of the US Mint, designed the obverse with Kennedy in profile, and Frank Gasparro designed the reverse, which is based on the Great Seal of the United States.

Roberts later wrote: "Shortly after the tragedy of President Kennedy's death, November 22, 1963, Miss Eva Adams, the Director of the Mint, telephoned me at the Philadelphia Mint and explained that serious consideration was being given to placing President Kennedy's portrait on a new design U.S. silver coin and that the quarter dollar, half dollar or the one dollar were under discussion.

"A day or so later, about November 27, Miss Adams called again and informed me that the half dollar had been chosen for the new design, [as] Mrs. Kennedy did not want to replace Washington's portrait on the quarter dollar. Also it had been decided to use the profile portrait that appears on our Mint list medal for President Kennedy and the President's Seal that has been used on the reverse of this and other Mint medals."

Coinresource.com picks up the story from there: "This work was undertaken immediately, Gilroy Roberts sculpting the portrait obverse, while his long-time assistant engraver, Frank Gasparro, prepared the reverse model bearing the presidential seal. Both were amply experienced in these tasks. Along with the sculpting of various mint medals, Roberts had prepared the models of John R. Sinnock's design for the Benjamin Franklin half dollar of 1948, following Sinnock's death the previous year. Gasparro too was a veteran of numerous medal designs, and he had most recently created the new reverse which debuted on the Lincoln cent in 1959. For these two artists, time was of the essence, as the new year loomed ahead, and the Treasury Department did not want to issue any of the existing-type Franklin half dollars dated 1964. Complicating matters still further was a severe, nationwide shortage of all coins. Half dollars of one type or the other had to be ready for coining early in the new year to avert a worsening of this shortage.

"In the meantime, however, there was a legal hurdle to overcome: Under existing law, U. S. coin designs could not be changed more often than every 25 years; the Franklin half was then only 15 years old, and its replacement would quite literally require an act of Congress. Partisan disputes were largely set aside in recognition of the nation's and the world's loss, and Congress managed to pass legislation permitting a change in the half dollar's design with only a few weeks' debate. The Act of December 30, 1963 made the Kennedy half dollar a reality."

And yet the Kennedy half dollar also marks the virtual demise of the 50-cent coin in the United States. In 1964, more than 429.5 million of the coins were minted (both in Philadelphia and Denver), and as recently as the bicentennial coinage of 1975-76, 521 million were minted. The coin went into decline after that. In 2007, only 4.8 million were minted.

December 11, 1960:An Assassin Stalks the President-Elect

A little-known near-assassination occurred in Palm Beach, Fla., on December 11, 1960, when one Richard Pavlick came within a whisker of blowing up President-elect John Kennedy with a car bomb that Pavlick himself would have detonated after ramming the house in which Kennedy was staying. Clearly the assassin was ahead of his time with the concept of suicide bombing.

Alistair Cooke, in his Letter from America on July 16, 2001, mentioned the incident: "There's one [assassination attempt] which never made the papers, which I heard about several years after John Kennedy was dead. It was an attempt on him, also shortly after his election, when he was down in Palm Beach staying at his father's house in December 1960.

"There is an office of the Secret Service known, not well known, as the protective research section. It has files on every letter -- threatening or obscene letter -- written to the President of the United States. The file has over 50,000 such notes, swollen by the never-ending dribble of the same offensive letters that come in to every incumbent president.

"If two notes appear to be from the same author the service puts out its feelers. Well, on Friday 9 December 1960 the protective research section received a letter from a postal inspector in a small New England town. It warned about the mischievous possibilities of a local character, one Richard Pavlick, who'd publicly uttered threats against the life of President-elect Kennedy.

"The Secret Service tracked the man to his home town and then started alerting airports, especially Palm Beach in Florida. However, two days after getting that warning note, on the following Sunday [December 11], a private small car drove along a Palm Beach boulevard and parked across from Mr Joseph Kennedy's house. At the wheel was Richard Pavlick.

"His car was equipped with seven sticks of dynamite -- enough, it was later calculated, to blow up a small mountain. They were rigged to go off at the pulling of a switch. President-elect Kennedy appeared and was about to go off to church. He appeared on the veranda of the house with, by great good luck, Mrs Kennedy and their two children.

"Pavlick had his hand on the switch. He suddenly paused -- overcome, he said, by a passing impulse. 'I didn't want,' he said, 'to harm her or the children. I'll get him later at the church.' Well, he drove off... However, four days later they caught him -- checking, once again, the layout of the Kennedy's church."

Pavlick was never convicted of any crime, but rather was confined to a mental hospital for about six years after the incident. He died in obscurity in 1975.

November 25, 1963:John Kennedy's Televised Funeral

A great many people lined up to file past the coffin of President Kennedy as he lay in state at the Capitol in late November 1963, and many more saw the precession of his coffin through the streets of Washington DC, but vastly more people only saw the event on television. It was the first such sombre spectacle of its kind, so far (fortunately) still unique in presidential, as well as broadcast history.

The Museum of Broadcast History tells a little of the story: "The next day -- Monday, 25 November a National Day of Mourning -- bears witness to an extraordinary political-religious spectacle: the ceremonial transfer of the president's coffin by caisson from the Capitol rotunda to St. Matthews Cathedral, where the funeral mass is to be celebrated by Richard Cardinal Cushing, and on across the Potomac River for burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Television coverage begins at 7:00 A.M. EST with scenes from DC, where all evening mourners have been filing past the coffin in the Capitol rotunda. At 10:38 A.M. the coffin is placed on the caisson for the procession to St. Matthews Cathedral.

"Television imprints a series of memorable snapshot images. During the mass, as the phrase from the president's first inaugural address comes through loudspeakers ('Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country'), cameras dissolve to a shot of the flag draped coffin. No sooner do commentators remind viewers that this day marks the president's son's third birthday, then outside the church, as the caisson passes by, little John F. Kennedy, Jr. salutes. The spirited stallion Black Jack, a riderless steed with boots pointed backwards in the stirrup, kicks up defiantly. Awed by the regal solemnity, network commentators are quiet and restrained, allowing the medium of the moving image to record a series of eloquent sounds: drums and bagpipes, hoofbeats, the cadenced steps of the honor guard, and, at the burial at Arlington, the final sour note of a bugle playing 'Taps.'

"The quiet power of the spectacle is a masterpiece of televisual choreography. Besides maintaining their own cameras and crews, each of the networks contributes cameras for pool coverage. CBS's Arthur Kane is assigned the task of directing the coverage of the procession and funeral, coordinating over 60 cameras stationed strategically along the route. NBC takes charge of feeding the signal via relay communications satellite to twenty-three countries around the globe. Even the Soviet Union, in a broadcasting first, uses a five-minute news report sent via Telestar. CBS estimated 50 engineers worked on the project and NBC 60, while ABC put its total staff at 138. Unlike the fast breaking news from Dallas on Friday and Sunday, the coverage of a stationary, scheduled event built on the acquired expertise of network journalism.

"The colossal achievement came with a hefty price tag. Trade figures estimated the total cost to the networks at $40 million, with some $22,000,000 lost in programming and commercial revenue over the four days. Ironically, the one time none of the networks cared about ratings, the television audience was massive. Though multi-city Nielsens for prime time hours during the Black Weekend were calculated modestly (NBC at 24, CBS at 16, and ABC at 10), during intervals of peak viewership -- as when the news of Oswald's murder struck -- Nielsen estimated that fully 93% of televisions in the nation were tuned to the coverage."

November 22, 1963:John Kennedy Dies

Only two presidents died in their 40s, both of unnatural causes. John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated 44 years ago today, aged 46 years, 177 days. James Garfield, murdered more than 80 years before Kennedy, didn't quite make it to 50, living 49 years and 304 days before his untimely death. The other assassinated presidents, Lincoln and McKinley, weren't old men when the died, either: 56 years, 62 days and 58 years, 228 days respectively.

Besides being the most recent assassination victim among the presidents, Kennedy was the only one shot at a distance, with a rifle. The killers of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley all got close enough to use handguns. Kennedy is also the only Democrat to be assassinated.

As the most recent assassination, still in living memory, Kennedy's death still seems to generate the most interest. For example, a Google search for "Kennedy Assassination" (with quotes) done ahead of this posting got about 730,000 results. "Lincoln Assassination" turns up 168,000; "McKinley Assassination" gets 19,100 results; and "Garfield Assassination" finds only 12,800.

Today was also the day that Lyndon Johnson became the 36th President of the United States, famously taking the oath of office aboard Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas, the only time a president has taken the oath in Texas, or for that matter west of the Mississippi.

Writing in the Cincinnati Enquirer in 1998, when the Boeing 707 that was Air Force One that day was put on display at the US Air Force Museum near Dayton, Mark Curnutte wrote: "Malcolm Kilduff... was deputy press secretary and worked for press secretary Pierre Salinger under President Kennedy. Mr. Kilduff rode in the third car of the motorcade in Dallas that day, two cars behind the president when he was shot. Back on the plane at Love Field about an hour after the shooting, Mr. Kilduff made preparations for Mr. Johnson's swearing in.

" 'We had no sound cameras, so I found a Dictaphone and tested the belt,' said Mr. Kilduff, who held a microphone between Mr. Johnson and federal District Judge Sarah Hughes.

" 'President Johnson didn't want to take off before being sworn in, and if you look at pictures, you can see the scowl on his face,' Mr. Kilduff said. 'He was upset about JFK, but he also didn't like Judge Hughes. He had opposed her appointment to the bench. I'm sure he was thinking, "Of all the people to swear me in..." '

... [Air Force Col. James] Swindal was aboard the plane listening to the Secret Service radio when the president was shot. 'My first reaction was to get the plane ready in a hurry to get back to Walter Reed (Hospital in Washington),' he said. 'We hoped it was a wound. When we heard he had died, we wanted to make sure nothing else went wrong. I got off the plane and saluted the casket when it arrived.'

"[Air Force Master Sgt. John] Hames was among the crew members who removed seats and a wall from a rear section of the plane, so President Kennedy's casket would not have to go in the cargo hold..."

November 20, 1925:Robert Kennedy's Birthday

Robert Francis Kennedy, younger brother of the 35th President of the United States and a candidate for that office himself just before he died, would have been 82 today. Presidential brothers, in recent decades including the likes of Sam Houston Johnson, Donald Nixon and Billy Carter, have seldom distinguished themselves, and Robert Kennedy is the only one to be appointed to a presidential cabinet, serving as 64th Attorney General of the United States under his brother and for a short time under President Johnson.

Would Kennedy have captured the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination had he lived? It's a what-if of presidential history, but even with the California primary in his column, it would have been an uphill fight against the momentum that Vice President Humphrey already had. This collection of news coverage just before his murder illustrates that fact.

October 22, 1962:The Cuban Missile Crisis

On the evening of October 22, 1962, President Kennedy addressed the nation on television, revealing the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba, evidence for which the US government had known about for some weeks. The next week would prove nervous indeed.

"Good evening, my fellow citizens," Kennedy began. "This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere...

"The size of this undertaking makes clear that it has been planned for some months. Yet, only last month, after I had made clear the distinction between any introduction of ground-to-ground missiles and the existence of defensive antiaircraft missiles, the Soviet government publicly stated on September 11 that, and I quote, 'the armaments and military equipment sent to Cuba are designed exclusively for defensive purposes,' that there is, and I quote the Soviet government, 'there is no need for the Soviet government to shift its weapons for a retaliatory blow to any other country, for instance Cuba,' and that, and I quote their government, 'the Soviet Union has so powerful rockets to carry these nuclear warheads that there is no need to search for sites for them beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union.'

"That statement was false.

"Only last Thursday, as evidence of this rapid offensive buildup was already in my hand, Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko told me in my office that he was instructed to make it clear once again, as he said his government had already done, that Soviet assistance to Cuba, and I quote, 'pursued solely the purpose of contributing to the defense capabilities of Cuba,' that, and I quote him, 'training by Soviet specialists of Cuban nationals in handling defensive armaments was by no means offensive, and if it were otherwise,' Mr. Gromyko went on, 'the Soviet government would never become involved in rendering such assistance.'

"That statement also was false...

.
"The 1930s taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war. This nation is opposed to war. We are also true to our word. Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country, and to secure their withdrawal or elimination from the Western Hemisphere....

"Acting, therefore, in the defense of our own security and of the entire Western Hemisphere, and under the authority entrusted to me by the Constitution as endorsed by the Resolution of the Congress, I have directed that the following initial steps be taken immediately:

"...To halt this offensive buildup a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948...

"It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union..."

The entire speech is here, as a transcript, audio file and video clip.

September 27, 1964:The Warren Commission Report

The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy released its final report this day in 1964. Informally known as the Warren Commission, after its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren, its last surviving member was Gerald Ford. Since the commission released its 888-page report, the human imagination has been working overtime to deny its essential conclusion:

"The Commission has found no evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy. The reasons for this conclusion are:

"(a) The Commission has found no evidence that anyone assisted Oswald in planning or carrying out the assassination. In this connection it has thoroughly investigated, among other factors, the circumstances surrounding the planning of the motorcade route through Dallas, the hiring of Oswald by the Texas School Book Depository Co. on October 15, 1963, the method by which the rifle was brought into the building, the placing of cartons of books at the window, Oswald's escape from the building, and the testimony of eyewitnesses to the shooting.

"(b) The Commission has found no evidence that Oswald was involved with any person or group in a conspiracy to assassinate the President, although it has thoroughly investigated, in addition to other possible leads, all facets of Oswald's associations, finances, and personal habits, particularly during the period following his return from the Soviet Union in June 1962.

"(c) The Commission has found no evidence to show that Oswald was employed, persuaded, or encouraged by any foreign government to assassinate President Kennedy or that he was an agent of any foreign government, although the Commission has reviewed the circumstances surrounding Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union, his life there from October of 1959 to June of 1962 so far as it can be reconstructed, his known contacts with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and his visits to the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in Mexico City during his trip to Mexico from September 26 to October 3, 1963, and his known contacts with the Soviet Embassy in the United States...

"(e) All of the evidence before the Commission established that there was nothing to support the speculation that Oswald was an agent, employee, or informant of the FBI, the CIA, or any other governmental agency. It has thoroughly investigated Oswald's relationships prior to the assassination with all agencies of the U.S. Government. All contacts with Oswald by any of these agencies were made in the regular exercise of their different responsibilities...

"Because of the difficulty of proving negatives to a certainty the possibility of others being involved with either Oswald or Ruby cannot be established categorically, but if there is any such evidence it has been beyond the reach of all the investigative agencies and resources of the United States and has not come to the attention of this Commission."

September 26, 1960:The First Kennedy-Nixon Debate

John Kennedy got the better of Richard Nixon 47 years ago in the first-ever televised debate between presidential candidates because he looked healthier. The irony is rich, since few presidential contenders have been less healthy than Kennedy. But the public didn't know that.

Certainly it was an important moment in the election of 1960. But pivotal? Maybe, maybe not. The Museum of Broadcast Communications puts it this way: "The Great Debates marked television's grand entrance into presidential politics. They afforded the first real opportunity for voters to see their candidates in competition, and the visual contrast was dramatic. In August, Nixon had seriously injured his knee and spent two weeks in the hospital. By the time of the first debate he was still twenty pounds underweight, his pallor still poor. He arrived at the debate in an ill-fitting shirt, and refused make-up to improve his color and lighten his perpetual 5 o'clock shadow. Kennedy, by contrast, had spent early September campaigning in California. He was tan and confident and well-rested. 'I had never seen him looking so fit,' Nixon later wrote.

"In substance, the candidates were much more evenly matched. Indeed, those who heard the first debate on the radio pronounced Nixon the winner. But the 70 million who watched television saw a candidate still sickly and obviously discomforted by Kennedy's smooth delivery and charisma... Studies of the audience indicated that, among television viewers, Kennedy was perceived the winner of the first debate by a very large margin.

"...Commentators broadly agreed that the first debate accelerated Democratic support for Kennedy. In hindsight, however, it seems the debates were not, as once thought, the turning-point in the election. Rather than encouraging viewers to change their vote, the debates appear to have simply solidified prior allegiances..."

August 30, 1963:The Hot Line Established

Hollywood has it that the hot line between the United States and the Soviet Union consisted of a pair of red telephones, one in the White House, the other in the Kremlin. The actually hot line, of course, was (and is) not like that.

The system was first established on August 30, 1963, less than a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. A contemporary New York Times article described it: "The decision to establish the 'hot line' is a direct outgrowth of the serious delays that developed in diplomatic communications between the two capitals during the Cuban crisis last fall. Diplomatic messages are now sent over normal commercial channels to the United States and Soviet Embassies in Moscow and Washington.

"With the time consumed by transmission, coding and decoding, translation and delivery, hours are often required before a message reaches its destination.

"The direct link, which is available 24 hours a day, will make it possible for the heads of the two Governments to exchange messages in minutes.

"A message from President Kennedy to Premier Khrushchev, for example, will be sent to the Washington terminal of the link in the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. There American Teletype operators will type the message on a teleprinter and a punched tape.

"After checking the typed message against the original copy, the Teletype tape will be fed into a Teletype transmitter. As the message goes out, it will be encoded by a "scrambling device" to prevent anyone from reading it at relay points along the 10,000-mile cable circuit.

"In Moscow, the message will go through a decoding device and appear on a Teletype machine in the Kremlin near the office of Premier Khrushchev."

President Kennedy never got to use it; nor, for that matter, did Nikita Khrushchev. According to CCN's The Cold War series: "The first message sent on the hot line came into Washington from Moscow in the early hours of June 5, 1967. In his memoirs, President Lyndon Johnson recalled picking up the phone in his White House bedroom -- and hearing the voice of his defense secretary, Robert McNamara.

" 'Mr. President,' said McNamara, 'the hot line is up.'

"Several hours earlier, war had broken out between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Soviet premier, Aleksei Kosygin, wanted to know if the United States had taken part in Israel's surprise attack on Egypt -- which was receiving Soviet support at the time. Johnson denied any involvement and said the U.S. was calling for a truce in the conflict.

"For the next several days, until a cease-fire was reached, the two sides sent as many as 20 messages over the hot line, to make sure that what later became known as the Six Day War would not escalate into a global nuclear war. "

July 16, 1999:John F. Kennedy Jr. Dies

John F. Kennedy Jr. had a few distinctions as a presidential child. He was the first and so far the only child ever born to a president-elect, coming as he did after his father's election but before his inauguration. When his father became president, he and his sister were the first small children to live in the White House since the second Cleveland administration (which included "Baby Ruth" Cleveland, born 1891, and her sisters).

His father famously died at a relatively young 46. JFK Jr. died even younger, at 38. Eric Nolte, a pilot, wrote the following about the death of the son of the 35th President of the United States in a private airplane crash eight years ago:

"In the last few minutes before Kennedy’s little single-engine airplane went into the heavy seas off Martha’s Vineyard, its radar track showed all the evidence of a mind wobbling in the tortured confusion called vertigo. This confusion steered Kennedy down a horrifying spiral to his death on that hot and hazy night in July.

"The kind of bafflement and panic that killed Kennedy arises in a mind as it struggles with the contradictory signals of its inner ear and its rational faculty. The inner ear evolved over millennia to measure one’s movement in relation to the fixed sensation of gravity. Gravity always acts as a vector pointing straight down to the center of the Earth. The inner ear is equipped with tubes of liquid that shift in response to any movement while the mind compares these signals against this fixed sensation of gravity. This balancing apparatus signals the pilot’s mind and says, 'You are strapped into a seat that is now as level as if you were sitting squarely at your kitchen table.'

"By contrast, at the same moment he was feeling perfectly right-side-up, the aircraft instruments, when correctly interpreted, conveyed the message, 'Your wings are tilted steeply to the right of level, the nose of this airplane is pointing way down, and your airspeed is already howling past the red line.'

"The airplane’s flight path creates forces that befuddle one’s awareness of Earth’s gravity. To judge by the sensations in the seat of your pants, you literally can’t tell up from down, left from right. You are as helpless to move out of the airplane’s acceleration field as you would be if you were pinned to the side of a spinning circus centrifuge when the floor drops away.

"And here is the crux of the matter: the pilot’s emotions drowned out the flight instruments’ story about banking and diving at high speed, and screamed out, 'No way! It can’t be! I’m actually flying straight and level! I know it! I feel it’s true!' "

June 26, 1963:Ich bin ein Berliner

On an historic visit to West Berlin in the summer of 1963, President Kennedy made one of his more memorable speeches, known at the time and to history for this line: "All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, 'Ich bin ein Berliner' "

It was not a reference to a jelly doughnut, as David Emery in About.com explains in reply to a question:

"Dear Guide:

"I have heard and read from several different sources the story that John F. Kennedy made a major German language blunder in his famous 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech in Berlin, Germany. The story goes that he should have said 'Ich bin Berliner' ('I am a citizen of Berlin'), and that 'Ich bin ein Berliner' really means 'I am a jelly doughnut.' (A Berliner is in fact a type of jelly doughnut made in Berlin.)

"Several years ago when I visited Germany, I found myself having drinks with a German journalist who struck me as fairly intelligent, so I asked her the question. She said that it is certainly not true. President Kennedy said the phrase absolutely correctly, although possibly with a thick American accent... She said that if President Kennedy had said, 'Ich bin Berliner,' he would have sounded silly because with his heavy accent he couldn't possibly have come from Berlin. But by saying 'Ich bin ein Berliner,' he actually said 'I am one with the people of Berlin.' "

"Dear Reader:

"Your friend, the journalist, was on the mark. This is truly The Gaffe That Never Was, despite reports to the contrary in venues as prestigious as the New York Times and Newsweek magazine. Experts say Kennedy's German grammar was flawless when he uttered those words near the Berlin Wall on June 26, 1963. The phrase had been translated for him by a professional interpreter.

"It is true that the word "Berliner" in German denotes a particular kind of jelly-filled pastry as well as a citizen of Berlin. But look at it this way: If I were to tell a group of Americans that my editor is a New Yorker, would any of them really think I've confused him with a well known weekly magazine?

"...while the proper way for a Berlin native to say 'I am a Berliner' is 'Ich bin Berliner,' the proper way for a non-native to make the same statement metaphorically is precisely what Kennedy said: 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' In spite of the fact that it's also the correct way to say 'I am a jelly doughnut,' no adult German speaker could possibly have misunderstood Kennedy's meaning in context."

May 29, 1917:John Kennedy's Birthday

John F. Kennedy was the first president born in the 20th century, as all of his successors so far have been. But Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan were all born before Kennedy, who was young indeed when he took office -- famously the second-youngest president after Teddy Roosevelt.

Hazel Hanback (born 1918), a long-time employee of the federal government and member of the board of trustees of George Washington University, had this to say about young Mr. Kennedy in an oral history interview for the university in 1996. She met him in Boston shortly after World War II:

“But meeting Mary Rourke is very interesting, because on Saturdays we all stuck together… the guys… all men, and one lady and me... And sometime we’d buy apple pie and baked beans, take it somewhere to eat, and Mrs. Rourke invited us to her apartment which I think was 122 Booten Street. So, on Saturday nights we’d all get around and talk about everything, but mostly about the business and what was going on and everything. So one day she said there is somebody I want you all to meet. So I want you to come up to dinner. It’s the same address but it’s a different apartment. I want you to meet a young man whom I’m very fond of and I think he’ll go far in the world.

“So at the appointed time on a Saturday evening, like 6 o’clock, and we had gone down and bought an apple pie and whatever, so we truck up to this apartment. This young man opens the door, his shirttail was hanging out, kind of dirty, he had filthy tennis shoes on, his hair was hanging five thousand different ways and he had a big pitcher of Manhattans in his hand. 'Come in!' and we went in this tiny apartment which looked like it had never been cleaned and she said 'I want you to meet John F. Kennedy.' So we spent the evening with John F. Kennedy and his Manhattans. We made baked beans out of cans to go with the apple pie. You know, I didn’t know that I was meeting a future president of the United States, but one does have bonuses somewhere along the way. I never shall forget that. I was not impressed. You had to go through his bedroom to get to his bathroom. All the clothes were on the floor, his shoes, his clothes. I mean you just had to step over them. It was like a hazard trail. But it was interesting. He was very nice, very affable. We did a lot of laughing, over what I don’t know, but it was fun.”