Ted Kennedy once wondered out loud if his family was the victim of some “awful curse,” and while it was certainly true that many of his relatives suffered from tremendous bad luck, his brother John took the cake.
When JFK was shot in 1963, it wasn’t the first time that his death seemed imminent. As a lifelong Catholic, he received the sacramental last rites of the church on three separate occasions, first on a boat trip back to the U.S. from England in 1947, when he fell so gravely ill that a priest was summoned. He was administered last rites again a few years later, in 1951, after getting a dangerously high fever while traveling in Asia, and then again in 1954 after a spinal fusion surgery caused him to slip into a coma. His fourth and final last rites were given on that fateful day in Dallas, when a country lost its leader.
Just because the US and the Soviet Union were involved in a Cold War didn’t mean they couldn’t play nice occasionally. During the Kennedy’s first visit with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, at a 1961 summit in Vienna, the First Lady was seated next to Khrushchev at dinner, and she asked about the dogs launched into space as part of the Soviet mission to make it to the moon.
Just a few weeks after the Kennedys returned to Washington, a crate arrived at the White House filled with puppies. It was a gift from Khrushchev, the offspring of one of the dogs that had returned safely from space. And for some lighthearted—but true!—news about your dog, here are the 20 Signs Your Pet Hates You.