Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation during the Cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States in Cuba. The missiles were ostensibly placed to protect Cuba from further planned attacks by the United States after the failed Bay of pigs invasion, and were rationalized by the Soviets as equivalent to the U.S. placing deployable nuclear Warheads in the United Kingdom,Italy, Greece, and most significantly, Turkey.

The crisis began on October 14, 1962 when U.S. imagery revealing Soviet nuclear missile installations on the island were shown to U.S president John f. Kennedy and ended fourteen days later on October 28, 1962, when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that the installations would be dismantled. The Cuban Missile Crisis is often regarded as the moment when the Cold War came closest to escalating into a Nuclear war .

Russians refer to the event as the "Caribbean Crisis," while Cubans refer to it as the "October Crisis."