John Fitzgerald Kennedy was widely recognized as the most important American president of the 20th century. It launches the United States into the space race. He facilitated the birth of the civil rights movement. He started the Peace Corps. And he was the president most instrumental in preventing the Cold War from becoming a nuclear world war. All Lyndon B. Johnson did for America was pick up the puzzle pieces that President Kennedy left on the ground for President Johnson to pick up and finish what John F. Kennedy started . , competitive, tumultuous and ready to explode with the Soviet Union since its creation. The space race was perhaps the greatest spectacle of scientific engineering of the first 5,755 millennia. The United States had to regain its superior status after the Soviets launched Sputnick I into orbit on October 4, 1957 and launched Yuri Gagarin into space on April 12, 1961 as the first human in space. Kennedy knew that the American people wanted victory in the space race and realized that, being so far away, United Space could achieve it. Then, on September 12, 1962, President Kennedy delivered the "Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort." This address is better known by this paragraph: “Its dangers are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all humanity, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never arise again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they might well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly across the Atlantic? Why is Rice playing in Texas? We choose to go to the moon in this decade? do the other things, not because they're easy... middle of paper ...... Works Cited "Speech at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort." Speech at Rice University on the National Space Effort. Aeronautics and Space Administration, nd Web. May 13, 2014. “Cuban Missile Crisis.” » John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, nd Web. “President Kennedy’s Inaugural Address.” Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association, nd Web, May 13, 2014. “Space Race.” Wikimedia Foundation, May 13, 2014. Web. May 13, 2014. “Sputnik 1.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, December 5, 2014. Web. May 14 2014.