The Special Olympics, which recognizes the athletic potential of people with intellectual disabilities, is one of the most recognizable and respected charitable organizations in the United States. But without the tragedy sustained by a member of the Kennedy family with an ...read more
1. He attended nearly a dozen schools and failed the third grade. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on November 20, 1925, Robert Francis Kennedy was the seventh child (and third boy) born to Joseph P. Kennedy and his wife Rose, the daughter of a former Boston mayor. Smaller and ...read more
Late on the night of July 18, 1969, a black Oldsmobile driven by U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy plunged off the Dike Bridge on the tiny island of Chappaquiddick, off Martha’s Vineyard, landing upside down in the tidal Poucha Pond. The 37-year-old Kennedy survived the crash, but the ...read more
In his 2018 State of the Union speech, Donald Trump repeatedly referenced a specific gang, MS-13, by name. These mentions were intended to justify his administration’s anti-immigration policies. Though MS-13 originated among Salvadoran immigrant communities in L.A., most of its ...read more
1. Wilbur and Orville Wright On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers—a pair of self-taught engineers from Dayton, Ohio—ushered in the era of flight when they made the world’s first heavier-than-air, powered-controlled flight near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Even though they ...read more
On this day in 2009, Edward “Ted” Kennedy, the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and a U.S. senator from Massachusetts from 1962 to 2009, dies of brain cancer at age 77 at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Kennedy, one of the longest-serving senators in ...read more
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (1915-1944) was the oldest of nine children born to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. (1888-1969) and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (1890-1995). A talented student and athlete, Kennedy graduated from Harvard College in 1938. He attended Harvard Law School but left before ...read more
Caroline Kennedy (1957-), the eldest child of President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (1929-1994), is a lawyer and author. At age 3 she moved into the White House with her parents and younger brother John Kennedy Jr. (1960-1999). Following her ...read more
Edward “Ted” Kennedy (1932-2009), the youngest brother of President John Kennedy (1917-1963), was a U.S. senator from Massachusetts from 1962 to 2009, making him one of the longest-serving senators in American history. Kennedy entered the Senate after winning a 1962 special ...read more
The journalist and socialite Jacqueline Lee Bouvier married John F. Kennedy, then a freshman U.S. senator from Massachusetts, in 1953. In 1960, Kennedy became the youngest man (and the first Catholic) to be elected president of the United States. As first lady, Jackie Kennedy ...read more
On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy, Jr.; his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy; and her sister, Lauren Bessette, die when the single-engine plane that Kennedy was piloting crashes into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr., was born on ...read more
John F. Kennedy, an Irish-American and the first Catholic to become president of the United States, arrives in Ireland for a visit on this day in 1963. Kennedy was proud of his Irish roots and made a special visit to his ancestral home in Dunganstown, County Wexford, while in the ...read more
Almost a decade after they met at a celebrity tennis tournament, the television news reporter Maria Shriver marries the movie actor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger on this day in 1986. Politically, it seemed an unlikely match: Shriver, then a co-anchor for the CBS ...read more
Opening testimony takes place in the highly publicized rape trial of William Kennedy Smith, a nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of Jean Kennedy Smith, the president’s sister and a former ambassador to Ireland. Smith, then a 30-year-old medical student at Georgetown ...read more
Robert Kennedy was the U.S. attorney general from 1961 to 1964 and a U.S. senator from New York from 1965 to 1968. A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Virginia School of Law, Kennedy was appointed attorney general after his brother John Kennedy was elected ...read more