John McCain
American politician (1936–2018)
John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American politician and naval officer who represented Arizona in the United States Congress for over 35 years, first as a U.S. representative from 1983 to 1987, then as a U.S. senator from 1987 until his death in 2018. A member of the Republican Party, he was the party's nominee in the 2008 presidential election.
Born into the prominent McCain family in the Panama Canal Zone, McCain graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958 and received a commission in the U.S. Navy. He became a naval aviator and flew ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers. During the Vietnam War, he almost died in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. While on a bombing mission during Operation Rolling Thunder over Hanoi in October 1967, McCain was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of war until 1973. McCain experienced episodes of torture and refused an out-of-sequence early release. He sustained wounds that left him with lifelong physical disabilities. McCain retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981 and moved to Arizona.
“John McCain” enters the record as american politician (1936–2018). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what John, McCain and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10390. VIAF identifies the subject as 27972425. The Library of Congress control number is nr91003214. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1936, 2018, 1983 and 1987.
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This entry incorporates text from “John McCain” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.