The youngest man to be elected president and the only Roman Catholic to hold the office, John F. Kennedy (1917–63) became the thirty-fifth president of the United States in 1961. Born outside of Boston in 1917, Kennedy graduated from Harvard in 1940 and served as a lieutenant in the United States Navy during World War II, earning a Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroic conduct in action. In 1947, shortly after returning from the war, Kennedy was elected to represent Massachusetts in the US House of Representatives. He entered the Senate in 1953, and in 1960 he narrowly defeated Richard M. Nixon to serve as President of the United States. While in office, Kennedy encountered the early stages of the Cold War during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the escalating involvement of the American military in Vietnam. He was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.