After World War II, the French tried to re-establish colonial control over Vietnam, the most strategic of the three states of formerly French-governed Indochina (Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos). Following the defeat of the French, Vietnam was partitioned by the Geneva Accord of 1954 into Communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam, which was non-Communist, but divided on religious and political lines. The United States supported a military government in the South and the decision of its leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, to prevent free elections which might result in the unification of the country under the control of the Communists. The Geneva Accord began to crumble as a result of attacks by guerilla forces supported by the Communist government of the North in an effort to take over South Vietnam.
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The Kennedy family had a whole menagerie of animals when they lived in the White House: dogs, a cat, horses and ponies, and more! In addition to the animals the Kennedys adopted for themselves, they
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, America’s first Irish-Catholic president, was the offspring of two families whose roots stretched back to Ireland. The Fitzgerald family was from western Ireland in the rural County Limerick village of Bruff. Sometime between 1846 and 1855 some of the Fitzgeralds migrated to America because of the devastating potato famine. Thomas Fitzgerald, born in Bruff in 1823, and Rose Anna Cox, born in County Cavan in 1835 were the parents of John Francis Fitzgerald, who was born in Boston, MA on February 11, 1863. On September 18, 1889, John Francis (“Honey Fitz”) Fitzgerald married Mary Josephine Hannon of Acton, MA, daughter of Michael Hannon and Mary Ann Fitzgerald, both of whom were born in Ireland. Their daughter, and John F. Kennedy’s mother, Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald, was born on July 22, 1890 in Boston, MA.
John F. Kennedy joined the US Navy in 1941 and was stationed in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific during World War II. Commanding the Patrol Torpedo Craft (PT) PT-109, Lieutenant Kennedy and his crew participated in early Allied war campaigns. On August 2, 1943, PT 109 was struck by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri and the entire crew was thrown into the Pacific. After fifteen hours at sea, eleven survivors made it to a nearby island with Kennedy towing one injured crew member to land.