“Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.”

John F. Kennedy (1917 to 1963) in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 1961.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (aka JFK) was the 35th president of the United States (1961–63), who faced a number of foreign crises, especially in Cuba and Berlin, but managed to secure such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the Alliance for Progress.

In 1940, he wrote his thesis at Harvard University on Britain’s military unpreparedness; which became the best-selling book, Why England Slept (1940).

In 1941, he joined the US Navy and, whilst commanding a patrol torpedo (PT) boat, he was gravely injured when a Japanese destroyer sank it in the Solomon Islands. Marooned far behind enemy lines, he led his men back to safety and was awarded the US Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism – later depicted in a Hollywood film, PT 109, in 1963.