Cuban Missile Crisis

1962-10-16 - 1962-10-29

Thirteen-day confrontation of 16-28 October 1962 between the United States and the Soviet Union, after Soviet nuclear missiles were placed in Cuba in response to US missile deployments in Britain, Italy and Turkey. President John F. Kennedy ordered a naval 'quarantine' of Cuba rather than an airstrike; Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev agreed the Soviets would dismantle the Cuban missiles in exchange for a US non-invasion pledge, with a secret US agreement to remove missiles from Turkey. Widely considered the closest the Cold War came to full-scale nuclear war, it led to the creation of the Moscow-Washington hotline.