May 20, 2008 1:51 pm US/Eastern
Timeline: Kennedy Dynasty Spans 7 Decades
NEW YORK (CBS News) ―
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The Kennedy clan included the brothers John, Robert and Edward, all of whom faced their father Joseph Kennedy's high political expectations.
AP
The Kennedy family's political successes and personal misfortunes span the 20th century and into America's modern age. Here are some highlights from the past seven decades of U.S. politics.
1941: Rosemary Kennedy, the third child of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and his wife Rose, is institutionalized because of retardation and a failed full frontal lobotomy.
1944: Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the eldest son of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, is killed at age 29 when his plane explodes over the English Channel while on a secret World War II bombing mission.
1948: Just 28, Kathleen Kennedy, daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, dies with her lover when a small plane crashes in the south of France. John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline
1963: Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, the second son born to John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy, is born nearly six weeks premature on Aug. 7. He dies two days later of respiratory ailments.
1963: John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, is assassinated in Dallas on November 22.
1964: Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, brother of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, is critically injured in a June plane crash.
1968: Robert F. Kennedy, who served as attorney general under his older brother President John F. Kennedy, is assassinated in Los Angeles while running for president at age 42.
1969: Edward M. Kennedy's dreams of a presidential bid are dashed when he drives a car off a bridge on Massachusetts' Chappaquiddick Island July 18 after a party. Aide Mary Jo Kopechne is later found dead in the submerged car.
1973: Edward Moore Kennedy Jr., son of Edward and Joan Kennedy, has his right leg amputated because of bone cancer. Later, in 1985 he founds Facing the Challenge, a nonprofit group devoted to people with physical and mental disabilities.
1984: David Anthony Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, dies of a heroin overdose in a hotel near a family vacation home in Palm Beach, Fla.
1986: Two-term U.S. Rep. Patrick Joseph Kennedy, son of Edward and Joan Kennedy, seeks treatment for cocaine addiction as a teen-ager.
1991: William Kennedy Smith, son of Jean Kennedy and Stephen Smith, is accused of raping a woman at the family's Palm Beach estate. He is acquitted later that year.
1997: Son of Robert F. and Ethel Kennedy, Michael LeMoyne Kennedy, who was accused of having an affair with his family's teen-age baby sitter, was killed on December 31 in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colo. He was 39.
1999: John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her older sister Lauren Bessette are killed when Kennedy's single-engine plane crashes off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, Mass.
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