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’s manned space program. He became president when JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963, and sought to continue and vastly expand Kennedy’s social initiatives in a program LBJ called the Great Society. LBJ signed into law the epoch-making Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) and introduced Medicaid, Medicare, and other social welfare initiatives. His dramatic expansion of the Vietnam War drained much of the funding from the Great Society and deeply divided the nation. Having been elected to a term in his own right in 1964, he was eligible to run again in 1968, but, recognizing himself as having become a divisive force, he chose not to. In 1969, when he left office, the Vietnam War remained unresolved.

Johnson, Philip (1906–2005) Johnson was one of America’s most influential architects, whose designs helped define the modern cityscape. He was an exponent of the so-called International Style, originated by Mies van der Rohe, which featured elegant minimalist lines, with a generous use of glass. Beginning in the 1950s, Johnson incorporated historical allusions and curvilinear forms in his work, and by the 1980s—with the American Telephone and Telegraph headquarters in New York City (1982)—he had become a defining architect of the more playful postmodern style.

Jolliet, Louis (1645– after 1700) The French-Canadian explorer Jolliet (in company with the Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette) set out in search of a water passage across the continent. Jolliet thought he had discovered it when he reached the Mississippi River, which he and Marquette explored from its confluence with the Wisconsin River to the mouth of the Arkansas River at the location of present-day Arkansas City, Arkansas. At this point, based on his own observations and reports from local Quapaw Indians, a disappointed Jolliet concluded that the river flowed south into the Gulf of Mexico and not west to the Pacific. Nevertheless, Jolliet and Marquette had paved the way for the French colonization of America between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains.

Jones, Christopher (1570–1621) Born in Harwich, Essex, England, Jones was captain and quarter-owner of the Mayflower, in which he transported the Pilgrims to America, landing them at the place they came to call Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. The Pilgrims may have bribed him to land so far north, beyond what they saw as the meddlesome jurisdiction of the Virginia Company, which had financed their voyage.

Jones, Jim (1931–1978) Jones became a preacher in the 1950s and founded the People’s Temple first in Indianapolis and then San Francisco. His devoted followers developed into a cult, and in 1977 moved with Jones to the jungle of Guyana, where they lived communally in a settlement dubbed Jonestown—with Jim Jones as their absolute leader. Friends and family of some of the cult members became concerned for the welfare of their loved ones, and, in November 1978, U.S. Representative Leo Ryan led a fact-finding mission to Jonestown to investigate charges of human rights abuses there. Ryan left the compound, with 20 Temple members, after an attempt on his life. At the local airstrip, however, cultists gunned down Ryan, an NBC reporter and cameraman, a newspaper photographer, and one of the defecting cultists. Others were wounded. Immediately after this attack, on November 18, 1978, most of the Peoples Temple cultists followed Jones in committing mass suicide by drinking poison (Jones shot himself). A total of 914 died.

Jones, John Paul (1747–1792) Jones was a Scots sailor and ship’s master, who, after killing a mutinous crew member, fled to America in 1775 and, at the outbreak of the revolution, joined the Continental Navy. He raided British commerce, capturing numerous ships. On September 23, 1779, he attacked a large merchant fleet under escort by the British warships Serapis and Countess of Scarborough. Outgunned, Jones fought a 3.5-hour battle, replying to a British surrender demand with “I have not yet begun to fight!” He captured Serapis and the Countess of Scarborough, but lost his own