The Kennedy curse is a series of deaths, accidents, assassinations, and other calamities involving members of the American Kennedy family. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] The alleged curse has primarily struck the descendants of businessman Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., but it has also affected family friends, associates, and other relatives. Political assassinations and plane crashes have been the most common manifestations of the "curse". Following the Chappaquiddick incident in 1969, Ted Kennedy is quoted saying he questioned if "some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys." [9] However skeptics argue that it is not improbable for a large extended family to experience similar events over the course of several generations. [10] [11]
Events that have been treated as evidence of a curse include:
The Kennedy family is an American political family that has long been prominent in American politics, public service, entertainment, and business. In 1884, 35 years after the family's arrival from County Wexford, Ireland, Patrick Joseph "P. J." Kennedy became the first Kennedy elected to public office, serving in the Massachusetts state legislature until 1895. At least one Kennedy family member served in federal elective office from 1947, when P. J. Kennedy's grandson John F. Kennedy became a member of Congress from Massachusetts, until 2011, when Patrick J. Kennedy II retired as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Rhode Island.
Edward Moore Kennedy was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Massachusetts. A member of the Democratic Party and the prominent Kennedy family, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died. He is ranked fifth in U.S. history for length of continuous service as a senator. Kennedy was the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy and U.S. attorney general and U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the father of U.S. representative Patrick J. Kennedy.
Joseph Patrick Kennedy Sr. was an American businessman, investor, philanthropist, and politician. He is known for his own political prominence as well as that of his children and was a patriarch of the Kennedy family, which included President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and longtime Senator Ted Kennedy.
Mary Jo Kopechne was an American secretary, and one of the campaign workers for U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign, a close team known as the "Boiler Room Girls". In 1969, she asphyxiated when a car driven by U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy left a narrow road on Chappaquiddick Island and overturned into Poucha Pond after leaving a party. According to reports, Kennedy left the party at 11:15 p.m. Kopechne's body and the car were not reported until the next morning, approximately nine to ten hours later.
William John Robert Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington was a British politician and British Army officer. He was the elder son of Edward Cavendish, 10th Duke of Devonshire, and therefore the heir to the dukedom. He was killed in action in the Second World War during fighting in the Low Countries in September 1944 whilst leading a company of the Coldstream Guards.
Ethel Kennedy is an American human rights advocate. She is the widow of U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy, a sister-in-law of President John F. Kennedy, and the sixth child of George and Ann (Brannack) Skakel. Shortly after her husband's assassination in 1968, Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, a non-profit charity working to reach his goal of a just and peaceful world. In 2014, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. She is the oldest living member of the Kennedy Family.
Edward Moore Kennedy Jr. is an American lawyer and politician. He is a partner at Epstein Becker & Green, a firm headquartered in New York City, and previously represented Connecticut's 12th State Senate district in the Connecticut State Senate from 2015 to 2019. He is a son of Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy Sr. from Massachusetts and a nephew of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
Michael LeMoyne Kennedy was an American lawyer, businessman, and activist in Massachusetts. He was the sixth of eleven children of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy. Kennedy also served as the manager of the non-profit organization Citizens Energy. He died in Aspen, Colorado, in 1997 after inadvertently skiing into a tree.
Rory Elizabeth Katherine Kennedy is an American documentary filmmaker. Kennedy has made documentary films that center on social issues such as addiction, her opposition to nuclear power, the treatment of prisoners-of-war, and the politics of the Mexican border fence. She is the youngest child of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel.
Kathleen Agnes Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington, also known as "Kick" Kennedy, was an American socialite. She was the second daughter of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald, a sister of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy, and the wife of the Marquess of Hartington, heir apparent to the 10th Duke of Devonshire.
Virginia Joan Kennedy is an American socialite who was the first wife of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.
The "Boiler Room Girls" was a nickname for a group of six women who worked as political advisors for Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign in a windowless work area in Kennedy's Washington, D.C. electoral offices. They were political strategists who received national media exposure from the infamous Chappaquiddick incident in 1969. It was in Chappaquiddick that Mary Jo Kopechne died in a car crash, in which Ted Kennedy was the driver.
Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr. was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. He was a member of the Kennedy family and the eldest of the nine children born to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. During World War II, Kennedy was killed in action while serving as a land-based patrol bomber pilot, and posthumously awarded the Navy Cross.
The Chappaquiddick incident occurred on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, United States, sometime around midnight between July 18 and 19, 1969, when United States Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off a narrow bridge, causing it to overturn in Poucha Pond. The crash resulted in the death of his 28-year-old passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, who was trapped inside the vehicle.
On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr. died when the light aircraft he was flying crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Kennedy's wife Carolyn Bessette and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette were also on board and died. The Piper Saratoga departed from New Jersey's Essex County Airport; its intended route was along the coastline of Connecticut and across Rhode Island Sound to Martha's Vineyard Airport.
Carolyn Jeanne Bessette-Kennedy was an American publicist for Calvin Klein. After her marriage to John F. Kennedy Jr., Bessette-Kennedy's relationship with her husband and her fashion sense became the subjects of media scrutiny, drawing comparisons to her mother-in-law Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The couple, as well as Bessette-Kennedy's older sister, Lauren, died in a plane crash off the coast of Martha's Vineyard on July 16, 1999.
Paul Francis Markham was an American attorney who served as the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts from 1966 to 1969. He was one of two associates of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, in whom Kennedy confided most closely during the Chappaquiddick incident. Markham, along with Kennedy's cousin Joseph Gargan, participated in a futile attempt to rescue Mary Jo Kopechne from Kennedy's submerged car, and also wrote down Kennedy's dictated statement to the police about the accident.
The Kennedys of Massachusetts is a 1990 TV miniseries that aired on ABC. Focusing mainly on the fifty-four-year marriage of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Kennedy. The events depicted in the series are based upon the book by Doris Kearns Goodwin titled The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys : An American Saga. The series aired across three nights, and earned an Emmy and a Golden Globe.
Chappaquiddick, sometimes known as The Senator, is a 2017 American political drama film directed by John Curran, and written by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan. The film stars Jason Clarke as U.S. Senator from Massachusetts Ted Kennedy and Kate Mara as Mary Jo Kopechne, with Ed Helms, Bruce Dern, Jim Gaffigan, Clancy Brown, and Olivia Thirlby in supporting roles. The plot details the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident, in which Kennedy's negligence caused an automobile accident which resulted in the death of his 28-year-old passenger Mary Jo Kopechne trapped inside the vehicle, and the Kennedy family's response.
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