As a Brit (not born til after 1963) I'm pleased I got them all with 2.20 to spare. His death has to be one of the great American tragedies of all time.
Or the cancellation of the A-Team, which I tragically realized as I went to the appropriate channel at the appropriate time and saw Matlock for the first time. A truly chilling and haunting memory from my childhood.
If the school taught history as they should, then everyone would know about JFK, just as we all know about Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Napoleon, Louis XVI, Nicholas of Russia, Henry VII, etal
IMO he's not really as important as any of the people you listed. Kennedy is a romanticized figure - people act like he was a really big deal, but his presidency was pretty short, and not a lot of major things really happened while he was president.
If you take the narrow view, then no, he didn't accomplish a lot. But his election was very significant. He was the first president that was any kind of "outsider" because he was Catholic (which was a big deal then -- a lot of people genuinely believed Kennedy would just be a puppet for a papal regime in the US) and he was young. It's no coincidence that he is the youngest president ever elected, and ran on a progressive platform that foreshadowed the uprising of young people in the 60's. He didn't serve long enough to see his signature policies enacted, but the Johnson Administration took up his torch and got them passed, most notably the Civil Rights Act, which was Kennedy's brainchild. Add in all the intrigue surrounding his assassination and the alleged plot, and you'd have to say that the Kennedy presidency is definitely historically noteworthy. But yes, I agree the man himself is romanticized.
His tenure as president was relatively short through no fault of his. It may have been romanticized but continued in effect, under Lyndon Johnson who pushed through most of the items on the Kennedy agenda, as well as some of his own. In my opinion, Johnson was one of the most underrated presidents we have ever had.
His presidency was way more eventful than almost every other one...and considering all of that happened in his short 2 year term you should hopefully realize that you don't know what you're talking about.
Most overrated president of all-time. He had the charisma of Barack Obama, but none of the decency and convictions. Drugged and raped women, didn't even actually write Profiles in Courage, got us into the Vietnam War. Why Boomers are all so in love with him is beyond me.