Posted: Apr 09, 2010 8:55 am
Shrunk wrote:FWIW, MIchael H. Hart's book The 100: A Ranking Of The Most Influential Persons In History included JFK, primarily because he was instrumental in establishing the US space program. For the short time he was in office, Kennedy certainly was involved in many historically significant events, not least of which was getting shot.
The space program was ultimately a very good thing, but the real motivation was a cover for developing ICBM technology. JFK's famous speech on it was one of the best motivation speeches from a US president, something that hasn't been matched since.