History of the Soviet Union (1953–64)
Khrushchev anxiously awaited the results of the 1960 United States presidential election, preferring Kennedy to Richard Nixon, whom he took as a hardline anti-communist cold warrior, and openly celebrated the former's victory on November 8. In truth however, Khrushchev's opinion of Kennedy was mixed. He knew that the new president was from a wealthy background and Harvard-educated. On the other, Kennedy was the youngest elected US president at 43 and gave off the impression of inexperience and "a boy wearing his father's pants" that Khrushchev assumed he could pounce on and dominate. If however Kennedy was that weak, there stood the possibility that he could merely be a puppet of "reactionary" forces and the US military-industrial complex. Almost immediately after the polls closed on Election Day, Khrushchev attempted to barrage the president-elect with proposals and the hope of improved US-Soviet relations, specifically turning the clock back to the accommodating diplomatic atmosphere of President Roosevelt's time. However, Khrushchev was informed that he was acting too quickly and it would not be possible to have a formal summit with Kennedy until he took office in January, and even then, arranging such a meeting would still take time.
Late bloomer
Václav Havel, born in 1936, was a playwright and writer with an interest in human rights. He became the voice of the opposition in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s and President of Czechoslovakia at age 53 after the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. Ronald Reagan, a former actor, union leader, and corporate spokesman, was first elected to public office at 55 when he became Governor of California and remains the oldest man to have served as U.S. President. Melchora Aquino was an uneducated Filipino peasant woman, the mother of six children, who became an activist in the fight to gain independence from Spain. Known as the Grand Woman of the revolution, she was 84 when the Philippine Revolution broke out in 1896. Silas C. Swallow was a minister who became a Prohibition Party activist in his sixties. Marjory Stoneman Douglas's career might also fit. Her first environmental work of note occurred when she was almost 60, at 78 she founded "Friends of the Everglades", and she continued until she was over age 100.