Short answers, pulled from the story.
John F. Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States, serving from January 1961 until his assassination on the 22nd of November 1963, in Dallas. He was the youngest person elected to the presidency at 43 years old, and is remembered for navigating the Cuban Missile Crisis, establishing the Peace Corps, and delivering the "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in West Berlin.
On the night of August 1-2, 1943, the Japanese destroyer Amagiri rammed and cut PT-109 in half during a patrol mission in the Solomon Islands, killing two crew members. Kennedy, despite re-injuring his back, towed a badly burned crewman named Patrick McMahon to safety using a life jacket strap clenched in his teeth. The surviving crew was rescued seven days later after Kennedy carved his location onto a coconut shell.
Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon by just two-tenths of one percent in the national popular vote, winning 303 Electoral College votes to Nixon's 219. The first televised presidential debate on the 26th of September 1960, watched by an estimated 70 million viewers, is widely credited with shifting momentum toward Kennedy. Pollster Elmo Roper estimated the debates gave Kennedy roughly two million additional votes.
The Cuban Missile Crisis began on the 14th of October 1962, when CIA U-2 spy planes photographed Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba, approximately 90 miles from the Florida coast. Kennedy imposed a naval blockade and, through secret back-channel negotiations, agreed to remove U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviets dismantling their Cuban sites. On the 28th of October 1962, Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the missile sites.
Kennedy signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty on the 7th of October 1963, after the U.S. Senate approved it on September 23. The treaty prohibited atomic testing on the ground, in the atmosphere, and underwater, though it permitted underground testing. The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union were the initial signatories.
Kennedy established the Peace Corps by signing Executive Order 10924 in one of his first presidential acts. He named his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver as its first director. The organization grew to 5,000 members by March 1963 and 10,000 the following year; more than 200,000 Americans have served across 139 countries since 1961.