John F. Kennedy

Kennedy’s unwarranted confidence and inadequate preparations collided with Khrushchev’s ideological determination and brutal rhetorical offensive.

Love letters that John F. Kennedy wrote to a Swedish paramour a few years after he married Jacqueline Bouvier are going up for auction. “You are wonderful and I miss you,” Kennedy scribbled at the end of a February 1956 letter to aristocrat Gunilla von Post.

President Biden’s inaugural address was the longest in 35 years — clocking in at 21 minutes and more than 2,400 words. That’s perhaps fitting at a time when the country is divided and facing crises on multiple fronts. NBCLX political reporter Noah Pransky breaks down the inauguration speech and how at moments it compared to those by John F. Kennedy,...

John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic president after his 1960 election, but Joe Biden’s faith looks very different.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” Franklin D. Roosevelt declared at his inauguration. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country,” said John F. Kennedy at his swearing-in ceremony. We looked back at some of the most inspiring quotes in inauguration history from Roosevelt, Kennedy, Dwight D....

Watch presidents of the United States take the oath of office on their Inauguration Days through the years.

As President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden prepare for their first nationally televised debate on Tuesday, here’s a snapshot of other key debate moments throughout history that have helped shape, or in some cases torpedo, a presidential campaign.

One of the most comprehensive private collections of John F. Kennedy memorabilia that chronicles his life from childhood to the White House is for sale. Hundreds of items associated with the late president are being offered as a single lot by Boston’s RR Auction for a minimum of $1.5 million. The collection includes a handwritten draft of Kennedy’s 1960 speech…

In the throes of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was planning to test a massive nuclear bomb in the Arctic Circle. But in a letter to then-President John F. Kennedy, a young Michigan girl was most concerned about the North Pole’s most famous resident. “Please stop the Russians from bombing the North Pole,” 8-year-old Michelle Rochon, of Marine...

Would Peter Buttigieg — the smartest kid in class, language whiz and devotee of John F. Kennedy — use his unusual last name in his eventual run for president of the United States? Or would he have a better shot of winning the voters of the future if he went by Montgomery, his middle name?

President Donald Trump knew where to go Saturday for home field advantage, finding comfort in the Deep South with college football fans cheering the nation’s top two teams — and him. His reception at the showdown between Louisiana State and Alabama contrasted with the scene at Game 5 of the World Series in Washington, where he was booed, and the...

Damon Lindelof didn’t take lightly the challenge of adapting the most acclaimed graphic novel of all time. The “Lost” and “The Leftovers” co-creator was a fan of the revered “Watchmen” book ever since his father handed him the first few issues when he was 13 in the mid-1980s. So agreeing to spearhead HBO’s new adaptation didn’t come without a bout...

Sander Vanocur, a television newsman who for decades covered momentous events from political campaigns to assassinations, the Vietnam War to the civil rights movement, has died, his son said Tuesday.

Conservative Republican Dan Bishop won a special election for an open House seat in North Carolina, averting a demoralizing Democratic capture of a district the GOP has held for nearly six decades. But his narrow victory didn’t erase questions about whether President Donald Trump and his party’s congressional candidates face troubling headwinds approaching 2020. Bishop, a state senator best known...

Science says age is only a number, not a proxy for physical and mental fitness. But with three Democrats in their 70s vying to challenge the oldest first-term president in American history, age’s importance will be tested as never before. Only a few years separate President Donald Trump, 73, from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, 77, and former Vice President Joe...

Law enforcement sources tell NBC 7 Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, the man convicted of murdering U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, was stabbed in a San Diego-area state prison and hospitalized.

D.A. Pennebaker, the Oscar-winning documentary maker whose historic contributions to American culture and politics included immortalizing a young Bob Dylan in “Don’t Look Back” and capturing the spin behind Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign in “The War Room,” has died. He was 94. Pennebaker, who received an honorary Academy Award in 2013, died Thursday of natural causes at his home...

Former Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, who spent more than three decades jailing criminals from mob kingpins and drug-dealing killers to a tax-dodging Harvard dean, died Sunday. He was 99, just 10 days short of his 100th birthday.

A moonstruck nation celebrated the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s “giant leap” by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin at parties, races, ball games and concerts Saturday, toasting with Tang and gobbling MoonPies. At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Aldrin showed Vice President Mike Pence the launch pad where he flew to the moon in 1969. At the same time halfway around...

A bill seeking to preserve abortion protections in state law fails to pass a key committee. Lawmakers cite God, church and faith in proclaiming their opposition to it. Abortion-rights groups protest outside a gathering of lawmakers. What sounds like a legislative fight in a state controlled by anti-abortion Republicans is actually quite different. The bill seeking to protect abortion rights...