"Ich bin ein Berliner," said President John F. Kennedy in 1963, expressing his solidarity with the beleaguered citizens of Berlin in a famous speech delivered there soon after East Germany built the Berlin Wall. 

But Kennedy was no native speaker of German. A true Berliner would have said simply, "Ich bin Berliner." Some have argued that, by using the article "ein," Kennedy accidentally declared himself to be a type of jelly doughnut. But there's no evidence that anyone heard his speech that way at the time. Kennedy's message of solidarity was clear, even if his German grammar was rudimentary. We've got an entire Historical Texts learning guide on this speech, so head over there for an in-depth analysis.

When John F. Kennedy campaigned in 1960 on the issue of the "missile gap," a gap existed. But it overwhelmingly favored the United States. The actual count of intercontinental ballistic missiles in 1961 came out to the Soviets claiming about 10 instead of the 1,000 feared⁶, and the Americans had 57.⁷