Why John F. Kennedy Did More for America than Lyndon B. Johnson

754 Words2 Pages

John Fitzgerald Kennedy has widely been recognized as the most important U.S. President of the 20th Century. He launched the United States into the Space Race. He facilitated the Civil Rights Movement into being. He launched the Peace Corps. And he was the most pivotal President in preventing the Cold War to becoming a Nuclear World War. All Lyndon B. Johnson ever did for America, was pick up the pieces of the puzzle that President Kennedy left conveniently placed on the floor for President Johnson to pick up, and finish what John F. Kennedy had started. The United Space endured a long, competitive, tumultuous, and primed-to-explode relationship with the Soviet Union since its inception. The Space Race was perhaps the greatest spectacle of scientific engineering in the first 5.755 millennia. The U.S. had to reclaim its superior status after the Soviets launched Sputnick I into orbit on October, 4, 1957, and launched Yuri Gagarin into space on April 12, 1961 as the first human in space. Kennedy knew that the American people wanted a victory in the space race, and realized that, being so far away, the United Space could achieve it. Then, on September 12, 1962, President Kennedy gave the “Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort”. This address is best known by this paragraph: "Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy... ... middle of paper ... ...Works Cited "Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort." Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, n.d. Web. 13 May 2014. . "Cuban Missile Crisis." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum, n.d. Web. 14 May 2014. . Kennedy, John F. "President Kennedy's Inaugural Address." Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association, n.d. Web. 13 May 2014. . "Space Race." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 13 May 2014. Web. 13 May 2014. . "Sputnik 1." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 05 Dec. 2014. Web. 14 May 2014.

Open Document