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John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, attended the Municipal Art Society Gala in 1998.
Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive/Getty Images
John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, and her sister died in a 1999 plane crash near Martha's Vineyard.
Rumors of a "Kennedy curse" were fueled by multiple family tragedies over the decades.
JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette's relationship is now the topic of an FX series, "Love Story."
The Kennedy family has been subjected to many tragedies over the years, including two assassinations and a plane crash that took the lives of John F. Kennedy Jr. and two other passengers.
Nearly 27 years ago, on July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her older sister Lauren Bessette were killed in a plane crash off the coast of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. There were no survivors from the accident.
The relationship between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy is now the topic of an FX series executive-produced by Ryan Murphy, "Love Story."
Their deaths became a major news story and perpetuated rumors of a "Kennedy curse."
JFK Jr.'s father, former President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963. His uncle, Robert "Bobby" Kennedy, was assassinated five years later in 1968. And two years before JFK Jr.'s death, his cousin Michael Kennedy also died after hitting a tree while skiing in Aspen, Colorado.
Here's what we know about the plane crash that killed John F. Kennedy Jr. and two others.
John F. Kennedy Jr. frequently made headlines throughout the 1990s.
John F. Kennedy, Jr. at the Democratic National Convention in 1988.
Bettmann/Getty Images
As the son of a president and a member of one of America's most prominent political dynasties, John F. Kennedy Jr. was destined for the spotlight.
JFK Jr. was born on November 25, 1960, just two weeks after his father was elected president. His father was assassinated on November 22, 1963, just three days shy of JFK Jr.'s third birthday.
JFK Jr., affectionately nicknamed "John-John" by the public, attended the funeral on his birthday and was famously photographed saluting his father's casket.
Throughout much of his adolescence and adulthood, he mostly remained out of the public eye.
However, his public image began to change after he introduced his uncle, Ted Kennedy, at the Democratic National Convention in 1988.
In September 1988, People named Kennedy, who was then a 27-year-old third-year law student at NYU, the "Sexiest Man Alive."
JFK Jr. also dated a few celebrities throughout the 1990s, including "Sex and the City" star Sarah Jessica Parker, Cindy Crawford, and Daryl Hannah.
John F. Kennedy Jr. began dating Carolyn Bessette, a publicist for Calvin Klein, in 1994.
John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy in 1995.
Rose Hartman/Getty Images
They met in the fitting room at Calvin Klein, where Bessette helped JFK Jr. pick out wardrobe items, Elizabeth Beller wrote in "Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy," cited by People.
Tall, sophisticated, and beautiful, JFK Jr.'s new girlfriend captivated the public.
After two years of dating, the pair married in an intimate ceremony on Cumberland Island, Georgia, People reported.
While their wedding ceremony was private, their relationship was anything but, thanks to the prying eyes of the paparazzi.
Evan Agostini/Getty Images; NY Daily News Archive/Getty Images
The media attention may have even inspired Kennedy to get his pilot's license in 1998.
"That was some of the happiest times he ever had. Floating around with the buzzards in his Buckeye [plane]. It was the freedom," his close friend Robbie Littell told "JFK Jr: An Intimate Oral Biography" author RoseMarie Terenzio, according to People.
"He said, 'It's the only place I can go where no one is bothering me. I have complete silence, and no one can get to me except the air traffic controllers.' Maybe that gives you insight into what he was really dealing with on the ground," his college friend Gary Ginsberg said, People reported.
John F. Kennedy Jr. was traveling to Martha's Vineyard with his wife and her older sister when their plane was reported missing.
The hangar where John Kennedy Jr. kept his Piper Saratoga airplane.
Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection/Getty Images
The Washington Post reported that Kennedy departed Essex County Airport near Fairfield, New Jersey, at around 8:38 p.m. on Friday, July 16, 1999. The sun was already beginning to set and "hazy conditions," which had been reported earlier in the evening, were getting worse, People reported.
Kennedy planned to drop his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette on Martha's Vineyard before traveling to his family's compound in Hyannis Port with Carolyn. The couple was due to attend his cousin Rory Kennedy's wedding the following day, according to People.
However, the plane never landed in Martha's Vineyard.
An unidentified driver reported the plane had failed to arrive at Martha's Vineyard Airport as expected, according to the Post, citing an NBC report. It kicked off a search for the missing aircraft in the early hours of July 17.
The Kennedy family notified the Cape Cod Coast Guard that the couple had not made it back to Hyannis.
A Coast Guard helicopter searching for debris from John Kennedy Jr.'s plane.
Daniel Goodrich/Newsday RM/Getty Images
The Washington Post reported that the Coast Guard then began investigating whether the plane had landed at another airport.
By 4 a.m., the Coast Guard began searching for the missing plane, and by 7:30 a.m., the Air Force and Coast Guard had launched 20 aircraft vehicles and two boats to search the area between Long Island and Martha's Vineyard, according to the Post's timeline.
On Sunday afternoon, what was presumed to be debris from the plane was found on Philbin Beach on Martha's Vineyard. Among the debris was a headrest that was later concluded to be from the missing aircraft and a black suitcase that contained Lauren Bessette's business card.
Rory Kennedy's wedding, scheduled for 6 p.m. that night, was put on hold as the family awaited more news.
The Washington Post reported that after more debris was found in the days to follow, the search-and-rescue mission became a search-and-recovery mission.
All three of the plane's passengers were now presumed dead. John F. Kennedy Jr. was 38 years old. Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy was 33, and her sister Lauren Bessette was 34.
Five days after the crash, the bodies of John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and Lauren Bessette were recovered.
Massachusetts State Police divers left Menemsha on Martha's Vineyard on July 19, 1999.
DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images
The debris field was identified off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, relatively near the estate once owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Kennedy's mother, The New York Times reported. (Kennedy Onassis died in 1994.)
The bodies of John F. Kennedy Jr., Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and Lauren Bessette were discovered by Navy divers on July 22, 1999, after an extensive search approved by President Bill Clinton.
The bodies of the crash victims, which were ''near and under'' the main body of the aircraft, were still strapped in, according to the Times.
Details began to emerge about what led to the crash.
A television technician holds up the official handout map of the search and rescue area off Martha's Vineyard.
JOHN MOTTERN/AFP/Getty Images
Kennedy had only flown about 72 hours without a flight instructor, and had only about 300 total hours of flying experience, The New York Times reported in July 2000. He had reportedly rejected an offer to have a flight instructor accompany the group on their journey.
As a newly trained pilot, Kennedy was not licensed to fly and navigate the air using flying instruments. Instead, he had only trained to fly using sight alone, which would have been extremely difficult in dark or hazy conditions such as those on the night of July 16.
Warren Morningstar, a spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, told the Times that "flying at night over featureless terrain or water, and particularly in haze or in overcast, is a prime setup for spatial disorientation."
About an hour into the trip, the plane's flight path became irregular as it began its descent into Martha's Vineyard, indicating that the pilot may have become disoriented by the darkness of the sky and the water, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded.
"His flight path into the water is consistent with what is known as a graveyard spiral," Jeff Guzzetti, an NTSB investigator in the accident, told Terenzio, according to People. "The airplane makes a spiral nose down … kind of like going down a drain. The plane went into one final turn and it stayed in that turn pretty much all the way down to the ocean."
The aircraft went down in the water about 7 miles from its intended destination of Martha's Vineyard.
Mourners pay respects at the floral shrine outside of the building where John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn lived in 1999.
Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images
The Washington Post reported that the plane did not send out a distress call. Instead, it made its final descent and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in under 30 seconds.
Kennedy, Kennedy-Bessette, and Bessette's bodies were cremated and buried at sea off the coast of Martha's Vineyard on July 22, 1999.
"We are filled with unspeakable grief and sadness by the loss of John and Carolyn and Lauren Bessette," Ted Kennedy said in a statement on behalf of the Kennedy family. "John was a shining light in all our lives and in the lives of the nation and the world that first came to know him as a little boy."
As the country mourned the loss, rumors of a "Kennedy curse" were reignited.
John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy attended the White House Correspondents dinner in 1999.
Tyler Mallory/Liaison/Getty Images
The extensive search captured the nation's attention, as did the tragedy of the three young passengers' deaths. Yet another tragic accident for the Kennedy family, the plane crash only added to rumors of a Kennedy family curse.
"I've looked high and low and cannot find another family since the ancient Greek House of Atreus that has suffered more calamities and misfortunes than the Kennedys," Edward Klein, the author of "The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America's First Family for 150 Years," said, according to The Washington Post.
While there are many logical reasons for the fateful plane crash, it's nevertheless poignant that the Kennedy family, one of the wealthiest and most influential political families in the world, has suffered so much tragedy throughout the last 100 years.
"The humanity of their story is what keeps us engaged," Kennedy family biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli told NBC News in 2019.
"We peer behind the scenes of their wealthy lifestyle, and we see, for all the advantages they have, tragedy can still happen."
Read the original article on Business Insider
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Thanks to the postwar Baby Boom and other factors, families in the '50s began moving to the suburbs.
Levittown in Long Island, New York, is widely recognized as the first modern American suburb.
Each home looked the same — they were all built in the Cape Cod-style and cost around $7,000.
As World War II came to an end, families looked for ways to start over. Emboldened by the GI Bill's provisions for home loans, they moved out of the cities in droves for newly developed suburban communities.
In fact, the suburbs expanded by 47% during the 1950s, according to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Levittown in Long Island, New York, was one of the first to introduce the idea of a pre-planned, mass-produced uniform suburban community, The New York Times reported. Families started moving there on October 1, 1947.
Though the community welcomed an influx of families, non-white prospects weren't allowed. Notably, African Americans didn't see the same benefits from the GI Bill, and it would take some years before racial and ethnic minorities broadly shifted to the suburbs.
Here's what it was like to live in America's first modern suburb in the 1950s.
Before the 1950s, people mostly lived in cities to be close to factory jobs.
Historical/Getty Images
At the time, most people lived close to the city center to work in factories, or they lived in rural communities to work on farms, according to economist Jay Zagorsky.
Everything changed in the 1950s when soldiers returned from World War II, sparking the great migration to the suburbs.
Irving Haberman/IH Images/Getty Images
The 1950 Census found that 60% of people lived in cities, while 40% lived in the suburbs.
Thanks to factors like the construction of highways, the development of new neighborhoods from farmland, and even safety in the event of an atomic attack, these percentages would soon shift drastically.
The GI Bill made it easier to afford a new home, prompting this transition from urban to suburban.
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The GI Bill provided each returning soldier with benefits designed to stimulate economic growth. Each soldier was given a year of unemployment and free tuition to go to college. The military pledged to back all home loans, which allowed veterans to buy houses with little to no down payments.
The Baby Boom started at the same time, causing many families to outgrow their city apartments.
A family of four stands in front of their house in Levittown, NY.
Joseph Scherschel/Getty Images
Shortly after WWII ended, the Baby Boom began. In 1946, 3.4 million babies were born, more than ever before, and 20% more than in 1945, per History.com. This trend continued into the '50s.
By the end of the boom in 1964, this generation made up 40% of the country's population.
Most historians think it was because Americans were eager to have families after having postponed marriage and childbirth because of the Great Depression and World War II.
Whatever the reason, people flocked to the suburbs to accommodate their growing families.
In response to this growing need for space, suburban communities popped up at a faster rate in the '50s.
An aerial view of a suburban community.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
During the war, factories focused on creating wartime essentials, like airplanes and barracks. In the '50s, they refocused their efforts on building home components and automobiles using the new practices — like the assembly line — they implemented in the war,
As a result, factories were able to produce materials for homes faster than ever before.
Levittown in Long Island, New York, is widely recognized as the first modern American suburb.
Tony Linck/Getty Images
Levitt and Sons, a construction company, purchased a 7-square-mile plot of potato and onion farms in Long Island in 1947. They set out to build one of the first uniform suburban communities in the US.
The community grew fast. In fact, a house was built every 16 minutes in Levittown.
Tony Linck/Getty Images
To construct the new community, which sits about 30 miles east of Manhattan, Levitt and Sons hired mostly unskilled workers to build the homes. They gave each a specific skill and created a sort of human assembly line. William Levitt even called his firm "the General Motors of the housing industry," The Guardian reported.
The Levitts eventually constructed 17,447 houses between 1947 and 1951. During the peak of the construction boom, one was built every 16 minutes.
People flocked to home sale events to get themselves a slice of suburbia.
Al Fenn/Getty Images
The first homes in Levittown cost new residents around $7,000, The Guardian reported. For veterans, there was no down payment.
When adjusting for inflation, a Levittown home in 1950 would be roughly $97,000 in today's money.
Every house in Levittown was identical. The Levitt family called it "the best house in the US."
Joseph Scherschel/Getty Images
At first, all the homes were built in the same style, and some residents even admitted to walking into the wrong house at times because they couldn't tell them apart, according to Khan Academy, citing Kenneth T. Jackson's "Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States."
The picturesque community was lined with greenery. In fact, a tree was planted every 28 feet in Levittown.
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Each home in Levittown sat on a 6,000-square-foot lot, The New York Times reported.
Outdoor spaces, like backyards, became focal points.
Robert W. Kelley/Getty Images
With the growing number of children, outdoor spaces became increasingly important to the suburban neighborhood.
Inside each home, there were four rooms, a built-in TV set, and Hi-Fi for the radio.
Joseph Scherschel/Getty Images
At first, they were modest homes, but most families saw their new suburban lives as luxurious.
Most Levittown residents experienced the responsibilities of owning a home for the first time.
A man and a woman clean opposite sides of a window. Many homeowners experienced the responsibilities of owning a home for the first time.
Newsday LLC/Newsday via Getty Images
Many Levittown homeowners learned homeownership responsibilities, such as tending to a lawn.
The suburb helped cement the idea of the "nuclear family" in American culture.
The community prided itself on neighborhood amenities, like this mobile public library.
Joseph Scherschel/Getty Images
There were also swimming pools that children could use during the summer.
Levittown also had seven shopping centers.
Underwood Archives/Getty Images
The shopping centers were called "village greens" and were designed to make the town more of a bustling community, per Encyclopedia.com.
The suburbs were also known for being a safe alternative to the gritty city streets.
Joseph Scherschel/Getty Images
Since the streets in the suburban neighborhood were considered safer than those in the city, parents used to allow children to bike around by themselves, per the National Center for Safe Routes to School.
Levittown was also known as a cheaper option compared to an apartment in the city.
Bernard Hoffman/Getty Images
The mortgage on a home in Levittown was reportedly about $29 per month, while most paid $90 per month in the city.
By comparison, the average rent in New York City in 2026 is just under $3,500, according to Zillow. The monthly cost of a 30-year mortgage on a Levittown home today would be roughly $2,000.
With all the amenities and perks, the community grew rapidly. In less than a decade, the population of Levittown reached 82,000.
Bettmann/Getty Images
The community has over 17,000 homes, making it one of the largest private housing projects in the history of the US.
As a result, Levittown became a model for other suburban communities in the US during the 1950s.
A suburban community in the 1950s.
Joseph Scherschel/Getty Images
Suburban home construction boomed in the 1950s. In fact, at least 15 million units were under construction by the end of the decade, according to the Wealth Management Group.
Although suburban communities boomed in the '50s, the shift was reserved for white Americans.
Joseph Scherschel/Getty Images
For years, there were rules that restricted minorities from buying homes in Levittown, and even as the Civil Rights Movement was starting to take form and the rest of the country began integrating after Brown v Board of Education in 1954, Levittown remained mostly white.
Two-thirds of Levittown residents today are white, according US Census estimates.
Some of the few non-white families resisted this standard.
Some non-white residents like William Cotter and his family fought against Levittown's whites-only standard.
Newsday LLC/Newsday RM via Getty Images
In 1952, William Cotter, a Black man, and his family, sublet a home at 26 Butternut Lane. When the lease was up, Levitt refused to renew it or sell them the home.
The refusal sparked support for the Cotters, and the family eventually purchased another home from a white homeowner.
With modern highways leading to the suburbs, men commuted into the city.
New highways leading to the suburbs didn't come without traffic.
Newsday LLC/Newsday via Getty Images
The suburban boom corresponded with the expansion of interstate highways in the US, starting the modern iteration of the commute from the suburbs to the city.
In 1950, 80% of men in Levittown commuted to Manhattan for work, The Guardian reported.
During a typical day, the streets of Levittown were filled with women, as the men were mostly working in the city.
Bettmann/Getty Images
When men left to fight in WWII, women began entering the workforce, gaining newfound independence and freedom. However, they were suddenly expected to give this up again and instead focus on childbearing and rearing.
In 1963, author Betty Friedan wrote in "The Feminine Mystique" that the suburbs "were burying women alive." However, some believe that women's dissatisfaction with staying home "contributed to the rebirth of the feminist movement in the 1960s," History.com reported.
Women also got active in civic engagement.
Women and children protest in favor of new stop signs.
Newsday LLC/Newsday RM via Getty Images
In 1959, women of Levittown, with children in hand, protested in favor of putting stop signs in an area with automobile-related deaths.
Levittown became a symbol of prosperity and anticommunism in American politics and culture.
William J. Levitt speaks with three senators.
Bettmann/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
As American politics increasingly centered on anticommunism and Cold War tensions rose, Levittown and suburbs like it took on a symbolic meaning in American culture, representing prosperity and the "American Dream."
Levitt was once quoted saying, "No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist. He has too much to do."
In 2026, Levittown is still a sizable community with a population of about 50,000. Though it's full of modern businesses and technology, the community still holds a legacy as a post-war suburban haven.
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