November 22, 2007 Early edition- Remembering JFK

1963 - John F. Kennedy assassination: In Dallas, Texas, US President John F. Kennedy was killed and Texas Governor John B. Connally was seriously wounded by an assassin, identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, who was later captured and charged with the murder of police officer J. D. Tippit. That same day, US Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States.

• Kennedy was the first president to begin a term with 50 states, Hawaii and Alaska becoming US states in 1959, the year before he entered office.
• Bay of Pigs Invasion fiasco
• President Kennedy expressed his approval of the Green Beret and the U.S. Army authorised it at last. In 1962, President Kennedy called the green beret "a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom." Special Forces troopers wearing their green beret with their Army Green dress uniforms formed part of President Kennedy's funeral procession. A green beret was photographed on top of President Kennedy's grave at Arlington National Cemetery.
• Cuban missile crisis
• On March 1, 1961, Kennedy signed an Executive Order which officially started the Peace Corps.
• On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy intervened when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doorway to the University of Alabama to stop two African American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from enrolling.
• Kennedy first made the goal for landing a man on the Moon in speaking to a Joint Session of Congress on May 25, 1961

"First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him back safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

This nation is the poorer for our losing him, and greater because of his time with us.