Kennedy Keeps Quite

A timeline based on that of SpaceGeeks in alternatehistory.com I expanded his TL to include a more earlier PoD.

Timeline
1912: British ship Titanic is set for transatlantic voyage. Before that the ship's second officer David Blair was removed from the rooster, but he managed to hand the key to the locker containing a binocular to his replacement. This would help Titanic to avoid icebergs and arrive New York safely. Point of Divergence.

August 1945: The Japanese emperor announces surrender during World War II, but rogue air units in Atsugi and Yokosuka refused to comply with the defeat, causing USA to interpret this as a sign that Japan is not surrendering and began the "Operation Downfall" invasion plan.

1946: The World War II is officially over with the Soviet occupation of Hokkaido and the American occupation of the rest of Japanese home islands, after a gruelling invasion which involved the multiple use of atomic bombs. The whole Korean peninsula came under communist rule.

1950: The Supreme Leader of the People's Republic of Japan (North Japan) Kyuichi Tokuda starts a civil war with its southern counterpart Republic of Japan. The Soviet Union, Communist China, and Korea gave support to Tokuda with military interventions.

November 1952: The Ivy Mike thermonuclear bomb fizzles due to unforeseen technical errors. End of the Japanese civil war.

August 1953: The Soviet Union successfully tested the world's first hydrogen with their RDS-6 weapon. This shocked the U.S. which began to plan a response to this.

1956: USA launched the world's first satellite Explorer I into space.

1957: Soviet Russia launches Sputnik I and II into space, the latter carrying a dog.

1958: NASA is born.

March 1961: NASA's Alan Shepard became the first man in space.

April 1961: Russia's Yuri Gagarin is the first man to orbit the Earth. Afterwards Kennedy approves a plan to build and launch space stations.

1962: NASA's Mariner 2 is the first to flyby another planet. Meanwhile John Glenn is the first American to orbit Earth.

September 1963: NASA launched a proto space station "Mercury Orbital Laboratory" based on Mercury Mark II into space. Alan Shepard is the sole crew.

1964: USSR launched Voskhod 1 the first multiperson spacecraft. In response NASA lauunched the Mercury-Atlas-Centaur 8 and Mercury-Atlas Centaur 9 spacecrafts to perform the first docking.

1966: NASA's Apollo I spacecraft succesfully flew.

1967: USSR's Soyuz I space mission is launched to their first space station "Salyut I"

1969: Russian cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Oleg Makarov became the first humans to perform a circumlunar flight.

1972: USSR launched Mars 2 and Mars 3 spacecrafts to the Red Planet.

1973: NASA launched Skylab into orbit.

1989: NASA's Magellan probe mapped the Venusian surface while Hubble Space Telescope and Galileo Jupiter Orbiter were launched.

1991: Dissolution of Soviet Russia.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[218,387,0,0]}">1996: NASA space probe Cassini is launched to Saturn.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[218,387,0,0]}">2008: Barack Obama is elected as the first black President of the United States.