US President John F. Kennedy delivers his "We choose to go to the Moon" speech at Rice University.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the first Roman Catholic and youngest person elected president at 43 years. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the United States Congress prior to his presidency.

Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort, commonly known by the sentence in the middle of the speech "We choose to go to the Moon", was a speech on September 12, 1962, by John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States. The aim was to bolster public support for his proposal to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade and bring him safely back to Earth. Kennedy gave the speech, largely written by presidential advisor and speechwriter Ted Sorensen, to a large crowd at Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas.