When President John F. Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, he spoke of many topics: the need for economic recovery, jobs training, and programs to address unemployment; reorganization and modernization of the military; and a proposed program to build fallout shelters nationwide. The most famous portion of his speech, however, was about the space program. The U.S. was lagging behind the achievements of the Soviet Union in the pursuit of space, and had just suffered through the embarrassment of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Kennedy rallied Americans by focusing on a deliberately challenging target, saying: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
