On this day in 1961, President John F. Kennedy receives an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from George Washington University, the same institution from which his wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, graduated in 1951 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. (Prior to attending George Washington, Jackie studied at Vassar College and, thorough a Smith College exchange program, at the Sorbonne.) In his acceptance speech he quipped, “my wife beat me to this honor by about 8 or 9 years. It took her 2 years to get this degree and it took me 2 minutes.”
Kennedy received his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1940.
