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The Kennedy family has had more than its fair share of tragedy since it first came to political prominence when patriarch Joseph Kennedy became US ambassador to Britain in 1937.
He and wife Rose had nine children.
:: 1941 Their eldest daughter, Rosemary, is put into a mental institution after a failed lobotomy.
:: 1944 Rose and Jo's eldest son, Joseph Jr, dies in a plane crash over the Channel. He was 29.
:: 1948 Kathleen, the widow of William Cavendish, the Marquess of Hartington, dies in a plane crash in France, aged 28. Her husband had been killed in World War II.
:: 1961 Joseph senior suffers a stroke which leaves him in a wheelchair and without the power of speech, but with all his mental faculties intact.
:: 1963 Patrick, the infant second son of President John Kennedy and his wife Jackie, dies two days after his premature birth.
:: 1963 President Kennedy himself is assassinated in Dallas on November 22 at the age of 46.
:: 1968 Senator Robert Kennedy, John's younger brother, and former Attorney General, is assassinated on June 6 in Los Angeles at the age of 42, while on the campaign trail for the presidency.
:: 1969 Senator Edward Kennedy is embroiled in scandal after driving off a bridge on his way home from a party in Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts. An aide who was in the car with him, Mary Jo Kopechne, dies in the accident.
:: 1973 Edward Jr, the senator's son, has his right leg amputated because of cancer.
:: 1973 Joseph, the son of Robert and Ethel, is the driver of a car in Cape Cod that is involved in an accident that leaves one passenger paralysed.
:: 1984 David, another son of Robert's, dies of a drugs overdose at the age of 28, in a hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.
:: 1986 Patrick, teenage son of Senator Edward, has treatment for a cocaine addiction.
:: 1991 William Kennedy Smith, the nephew of John, Robert and Edward and the son of their sister, Jean, stands trail accused of raping a woman at the family home in Palm Beach, Florida. He is acquitted.
:: 1994 Jackie Kennedy dies of cancer at the age of 64.
:: 1997 Michael Kennedy, Robert's son, dies in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado, at the age of 39.
:: 1999 John F Kennedy Jr, son of President Jack, dies aged 38, with his wife, Carolyn and sister-in-law Lauren, when the plane he is piloting crashes into the waters off Martha's Vineyard.
:: 2002 Michael Skakel, nephew of Ethel, Robert's widow, is found guilty of the murder of Martha Moxley in 1975. He is sentenced to at least 20 years in jail.
:: 2008 Senator Edward is diagnosed in May with a malignant brain tumour and dies in August the following year, two weeks after his sister Eunice.
: 2012 Mary, the estranged wife of Robert F Kennedy Jris found dead at her New York state home, aged 52.
