History Fact Finder | War and Conflict: Twentieth Century - What Was The Cuban Missile Crisis?

What was the Cuban Missile Crisis?

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation that took place in 1962 between the United States and the Soviet Union over the Soviet Union's sending of nuclear missiles to Fidel Castro (1926– ), the Communist leader of Cuba, an island nation 90 miles south of Florida. (Communism is a system of government in which the state controls the economy and only one political party holds power.) On October 14, 1962, an American U-2 spy plane photographed the missile sites the Soviets were building on Cuba. Some 40,000 Soviet soldiers were on the island, as were 20 missiles tipped with nuclear warheads. Such missiles would be able to reach the continental United States. The belief was that the Soviet Union and the United States were on the brink of nuclear war. U.S. President John Kennedy (1917–1963) demanded that the Soviets remove the missiles from Cuba, and he ordered a naval quarantine...

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