Cuban Missile Crisis

October 16, 1962

U-2 photographs showed Soviet medium-range nuclear missiles being assembled in Cuba, ninety miles from Florida. For thirteen days the world held its breath while Kennedy's ExComm debated strike versus blockade. Khrushchev blinked; missiles were traded quietly for American ones in Turkey, and both leaders stepped back from the precipice. The closest the century came to nuclear war had come and gone.