50 Fun Facts About The Kennedy Family

After his patrol boat was sunk in 1943, John F. Kennedy scratched a rescue message onto what?

A coconut shell carried his plea for help, and all eleven survivors of PT-109 were rescued. He later kept it as a paperweight on his Oval Office desk.

Which operation, arranged by her father in 1941, left Rosemary Kennedy permanently incapacitated?

A lobotomy at 23 left Rosemary unable to walk or speak intelligibly. From 1949 she lived at a care institution in Wisconsin, at first isolated from her siblings.

Which sporting movement grew out of a summer camp Eunice Kennedy Shriver ran at her Maryland farm?

Special Olympics held its first international games at Chicago's Soldier Field in 1968, drawing 1,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities from 26 states and Canada.

Which bodybuilder turned film star did Maria Shriver, a niece of John F. Kennedy, marry in 1986?

Arnold Schwarzenegger, later a Republican governor, married into America's best-known Democratic dynasty. The couple had four children and divorced in 2021.

Which Soviet leader gave the Kennedy family Pushinka, a puppy whose mother had flown in space?

Nikita Khrushchev sent the puppy after Jacqueline Kennedy asked him about the space dog Strelka at a dinner in Vienna. Pushinka later had four pups the president called pupniks.

Which film star sang "Happy Birthday" to President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in May 1962?

Marilyn Monroe wore a sheer dress sewn with 2,500 rhinestones, so tight she had difficulty putting it on. The gala came ten days before his actual 45th birthday.

Ted Kennedy drove off a narrow bridge on which Massachusetts island in July 1969, killing his passenger?

Chappaquiddick shadowed the rest of his career: he pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of the accident and received a two-month suspended jail sentence.

Which Greek shipping magnate did Jacqueline Kennedy marry in October 1968, five years after Dallas?

Aristotle Onassis married her on Skorpios, his private island in the Ionian Sea. The match sharply dented her popularity with an American public that saw it as a betrayal.

Which title did People magazine give John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1988, while he was studying law?

Sexiest Man Alive went to the late president's son before he had finished law school. He then failed the bar exam twice, passing on his third attempt in July 1990.

Which Lerner and Loewe musical gave the Kennedy White House years their lasting nickname?

Camelot was the comparison Jacqueline Kennedy drew in a Life magazine interview a week after Dallas, saying her husband liked to play the cast recording before bed.

In which Cape Cod village does the Kennedy Compound, the family's waterfront summer home, stand?

Hyannis Port became the family base in 1926, when Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. rented a summer cottage there. He bought it two years later and enlarged it for his growing family.

Which sitting vice president did John F. Kennedy narrowly defeat in the 1960 presidential election?

Richard Nixon began the autumn campaign six points ahead in the polls, then perspired under harsh studio lighting in the first televised presidential debate.

Which Cabinet post did Robert F. Kennedy hold in his brother John's administration from 1961?

Attorney General at just 35, he was one of the youngest Cabinet members in American history, and he had run his brother's presidential campaign the year before.

In which city was Robert F. Kennedy shot in a hotel kitchen, hours after winning the California primary?

Los Angeles busboy Juan Romero, 17, was shaking Kennedy's hand in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen when the shots came. He cradled the senator's head and placed a rosary in his hand.

Which volunteer agency, founded in 1961, had Kennedy in-law Sargent Shriver as its first director?

The Peace Corps began in March 1961, and Shriver ran it for five years. He went on to found Head Start and other programs as architect of the War on Poverty.

Which book about eight US senators won John F. Kennedy a Pulitzer Prize in 1957?

Profiles in Courage won the biography prize although the jury had not shortlisted it. Speechwriter Ted Sorensen later acknowledged drafting most of its chapters.

John F. Kennedy's 1960 victory made him the first US president of which religious faith?

Catholic faith was a live campaign issue, so he went to Houston to assure an association of Protestant ministers that his church would not shape his decisions.

From which university did Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and all four of his sons graduate?

Harvard gave the family its degrees but not always its welcome: as a student, Joseph Sr. joined the Hasty Pudding Club but was not invited into the elite Porcellian Club.

Which US coin first carried John F. Kennedy's portrait in 1964, replacing Benjamin Franklin's?

The half dollar was authorized by Congress just over a month after his death, and the first silver coins were hoarded as mementos as soon as they were released.

Which political magazine did John F. Kennedy Jr. launch in 1995, with Cindy Crawford on its first cover?

George put Cindy Crawford on its debut cover dressed as the first US president, and sold politics as lifestyle until it closed in 2001.

To which country did Franklin D. Roosevelt send Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. as US ambassador in 1938?

The United Kingdom posting ended badly: he resigned in late 1940 after a controversy over his public suggestion that democracy there was finished.

Which singer serenaded Caroline Kennedy at her 50th birthday with a 1969 hit he said she inspired?

Neil Diamond said in 2007 that a magazine photo of the young Caroline on a horse inspired Sweet Caroline, though he later said the song was really about his then-wife.

To which country did Barack Obama send Caroline Kennedy in 2013 as the first woman US ambassador there?

Japan was her post until January 2017, and she returned to diplomacy as ambassador to Australia from 2022 to 2024.

Which sitting president did Ted Kennedy challenge for the Democratic presidential nomination?

Jimmy Carter won enough delegates to clinch it, yet Kennedy carried his insurgent campaign on to the party convention that August, hoping to free delegates from the primary results.

Who was convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy in 1968?

Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death in 1969, but the sentence was commuted to life in 1972. Olympic decathlete Rafer Johnson helped wrestle him to the ground.

Which game did the Kennedy family famously play on the lawns of their Cape Cod compound?

Touch football suited a family of athletes: Robert played end for his college team and scored a touchdown in his senior year before breaking his leg in practice.

Which actress earned an Oscar nomination for playing Jacqueline Kennedy in the 2016 film Jackie?

Natalie Portman took a role first announced for Rachel Weisz in 2010, when Darren Aronofsky was set to direct. Both left the project after their relationship ended.

How did Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the eldest brother, die on a secret mission in August 1944?

His bomber exploded in flight when its load of explosive detonated prematurely. He had completed 25 combat missions and could have gone home, but volunteered.

Which nickname did Ted Kennedy earn while representing Massachusetts in Congress from 1962 to 2009?

Lion of the Senate fitted his record: Kennedy and his staff wrote more than 300 bills that were enacted into law.

Which state elected Robert F. Kennedy to the US Senate in 1964, despite jibes that he was a carpetbagger?

New York voters chose him over Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating, even though he did not live in the state and was not registered to vote there.

Whom did John F. Kennedy Jr. marry in a secret candlelit ceremony on a Georgia island in 1996?

Carolyn Bessette, a Calvin Klein publicist, wed him at the First African Baptist Church before about 40 guests, and the couple kept it from the press until afterward.

Which Wall Street regulator did Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. lead as its first chairman from 1934?

The Securities and Exchange Commission policed a market he knew well: as a broker he had used tactics later considered insider trading and market manipulation.

Rose Kennedy's father, a charismatic mayor of Boston in the early 1900s, was known by which nickname?

Honey Fitz came from John F. Fitzgerald's charm and theatrical campaigning. His grandson renamed the presidential yacht after him shortly after winning the White House.

Which English actor, a member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack, married Patricia Kennedy in 1954?

Peter Lawford and Patricia hosted lavish parties at their California beach house. He joined the Rat Pack in 1959, and the couple divorced in 1966.

Which union boss did Robert F. Kennedy pursue for years, as Senate counsel and then in government?

Jimmy Hoffa faced a dedicated squad of prosecutors and investigators that Kennedy set up at the Justice Department. The union leader vanished mysteriously in 1975.

Which adrenal disorder, diagnosed in 1947, did John F. Kennedy keep secret throughout his career?

Addison's disease was diagnosed at a London clinic when he was 30 and in his first term in Congress. The public learned of it only years after his death.

What was Jacqueline Kennedy's surname before her 1953 marriage to John F. Kennedy?

Bouvier came from her father, a Wall Street stockbroker nicknamed Black Jack. Her mother's second husband, Hugh Auchincloss, owned the estates where she grew up.

By what name was John F. Kennedy International Airport commonly known before its renaming in December 1963?

Idlewild came from the beach golf course the airport displaced, and the name stuck in common use until the renaming on Christmas Eve 1963.

Which award did Jacqueline Kennedy receive for her 1962 tour of the restored White House?

An Emmy, given as a special trustees' award, recognized a broadcast that drew tens of millions of viewers. Lady Bird Johnson accepted it on her behalf.

Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy married the heir to which English dukedom in 1944, months before he was killed?

Devonshire's heir, the Marquess of Hartington, was shot by a sniper in Belgium four months after the wedding. Kathleen herself died in a plane crash in 1948.

Ted Kennedy was expelled from college in 1951 after a classmate took his place at an exam in which subject?

Spanish was the exam he dodged, anxious to stay eligible for athletics. He enlisted in the Army for two years, then was readmitted in 1953 and went on to graduate.

Which 1940 book did John F. Kennedy develop from his college thesis on appeasement at Munich?

Why England Slept borrowed from the American title of a Winston Churchill book, and it sold 80,000 copies after publishing magnate Henry Luce wrote the foreword.

Which Hollywood studio was formed in 1928 when Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. merged his film and theater companies?

RKO Pictures grew out of his FBO studio and a chain of more than 700 vaudeville theaters. The studio went on to produce King Kong and Citizen Kane.

Which Irish county did John F. Kennedy's great-grandfather Patrick leave for Boston in the late 1840s?

Wexford drew the president back in 1963, when he visited the cottage at Dunganstown, near New Ross, where his ancestors had lived before leaving for America.

In which city did Robert F. Kennedy tell a campaign rally crowd that Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed?

Indianapolis remained calm that night, which is believed to be partly because of his speech. Police had warned they could not protect him if the crowd rioted.

Robert F. Kennedy made the first ascent of Mount Kennedy, named for his brother, in which part of Canada?

Yukon's Mount Kennedy rises to about 14,000 feet near the Alaska border. He climbed with a National Geographic Society party led by Jim Whittaker.

Which memoir by Robert F. Kennedy, published the year after his death, recounts the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Thirteen Days describes the meetings of the executive committee his brother assembled to handle the standoff. The 2000 film of the same name was based on a different book.

Which Virginia estate did Robert and Ethel Kennedy buy from John F. Kennedy and fill with eleven children?

Hickory Hill, a brick house in McLean dating from about 1870, passed between the brothers after the 1956 Democratic convention and stayed in the family until 2009.

Which silent-film star had a three-year affair with Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., who financed her films?

Gloria Swanson ended the relationship when she discovered that an expensive gift from Kennedy had actually been charged to her own account.

Which Florida landmark was officially renamed for Kennedy from 1963 to 1973?

Cape Canaveral lost its name by executive order of Lyndon Johnson, at Jacqueline Kennedy's suggestion. Florida's legislature restored the old name in 1973.