Events linked to the alleged curse include:
Kennedy deaths • August 12, 1944 –
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., brother of
John F. Kennedy, died when the military aircraft he was piloting exploded over
East Suffolk, England. • September 9, 1944 –
William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, newlywed husband of
Kathleen Kennedy, was fatally shot by a German sniper while leading his company near
Heppen, Belgium. • May 13, 1948 –
Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy (formally known as Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington) died in a plane crash alongside her lover
Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam, Pilot Peter Townsend and Navigator Arthur Freeman near
Saint-Bauzile,
France.. • August 23, 1956 – Arabella Kennedy, daughter of John F. Kennedy, died at birth. • August 9, 1963 –
Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, son of John F. Kennedy, died of
infant respiratory distress syndrome two days after his premature birth on August 7 at
Otis Air Force Base, Massachusetts. • May 18, 1967 – Joan Patricia Skakel, George Skakel Jr's widow, died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, after choking on a piece of meat while eating dinner. She was 39 years old. • April 25, 1984 – David A. Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, died of a
drug overdose in a
Palm Beach, Florida hotel room. • May 19, 1994 –
Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis, wife of John F. Kennedy, died of
lymphoma that was discovered at a hospital visit after a fall from a horse. • December 31, 1997 –
Michael LeMoyne Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, died in a
skiing accident after crashing into a tree in
Aspen, Colorado. • August 10, 1999 -
Anthony Radziwiłł, son of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' sister,
Lee Radziwill, died at 40 after a ten-year battle against cancer. • September 11, 2001 –
Robert "Bob" Speisman, son-in-law of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' longtime companion
Maurice Tempelsman, was killed in the
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Speisman was a passenger on
American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into
the Pentagon. • September 16, 2011 –
Kara Anne Kennedy, daughter of
Ted Kennedy, died at 51 after suffering a heart attack at a health club in Washington DC. • May 16, 2012 –
Mary Richardson Kennedy, wife of
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., died by suicide on the grounds of her home in
Bedford, New York. • September 4, 2018 –
Christopher Kennedy Lawford, son of
Patricia Kennedy Lawford, died at 63 of a heart attack after having a medical emergency at a yoga studio in Vancouver, Canada. • August 1, 2019 – Saoirse Kennedy Hill, granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, died of an accidental drug overdose at the
Kennedy Compound in
Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. • April 2, 2020 –
Maeve Kennedy McKean, granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, disappeared with her eight-year-old son Gideon Joseph Kennedy McKean during a short canoe trip in
Chesapeake Bay. Their bodies were recovered from the bay later that week. In publicly announcing her diagnosis in the
New Yorker a month prior, Schlossberg wrote that "I have added a new tragedy to [my mother's] life, to our family's life, and there's nothing I can do to stop it."
Kennedy disabilities • November 1941 –
Rosemary Kennedy, age 23, struggled to read and write, and she suffered from mood swings, seizures, and violent outbursts. During birth, Rosemary was deprived of oxygen as her mother and her nurse waited for the doctor to arrive. As she grew older, she became more rebellious and the family worried she would do something that could tarnish the Kennedy reputation. In an attempt to cure or treat his daughter, Joseph Kennedy secretly arranged for her to undergo a prefrontal
lobotomy, which was seen as a promising treatment at the time for various mental illnesses. Instead of benefiting Rosemary, the now-discredited procedure left her mentally and physically incapacitated. Rosemary remained
institutionalized in seclusion, in rural
Wisconsin, until her death in 2005.
Other incidents • June 19, 1964 – U.S. senator
Ted Kennedy survived a plane crash that killed one of his aides as well as the pilot. The plane was on its way to a
Democratic State Convention in
Springfield. The plane crashed in an
apple orchard near
Southampton, Massachusetts. The senator was pulled from the wreckage by passenger (and fellow senator)
Birch Bayh. Kennedy spent five months in a hospital recovering from a broken back, a punctured lung, broken ribs, and internal bleeding. Following the crash, Robert F. Kennedy remarked to aide Ed Guthman: "Somebody up there doesn't like us." • July 18, 1969 – Ted Kennedy accidentally drove his car off a bridge on
Chappaquiddick Island,
Massachusetts, resulting in the drowning death of 28-year-old passenger
Mary Jo Kopechne. Ted did not report the accident to the police until the next morning and pled guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident. • August 13, 1973 –
Joseph P. Kennedy II was the driver of a
Jeep in
Nantucket, Massachusetts that crashed and left his passenger, Pam Kelley, paralyzed. Fellow passenger and brother was injured. • April 1, 1991 –
William Kennedy Smith was arrested and charged with the rape of a young woman at the Kennedy estate in Palm Beach, Florida. The subsequent trial attracted extensive media coverage. Smith was acquitted. • April 25, 2026 –
Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his wife,
Cheryl Hines, were present at the
2026 Whitehouse correspondents dinner shooting. They and everyone else in attendance were unharmed. ==See also==