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In 1960, John F. Kennedy became the youngest person elected to the presidency of the United States. He was forty-three years old. He assumed the office in the midst of the Cold War, an intense political and economic rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted from 1945 to 1991. Kennedy successfully led the country through two of the most alarming Cold War crises: the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Soviet construction of the Berlin Wall. The Kennedy administration also crafted sweeping civil rights legislation that was signed into law in 1964. Kennedy's presidency came to a shocking end on November 22, 1963, when he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. -- John F. Kennedy Biography