in October 1962, when President John F. Kennedy learned that Soviet nuclear missiles were being based in Cuba, he ordered a naval quarantine and demanded that the Soviet Union remove all their offensive weapons from the island. This confrontation brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war. The crisis ended when the Soviets dismantled their missile installations in exchange for a U.S. agreement to discontinue efforts to overthrow Fidel Castro. http://tqd.advanced.org/11046

Caused when the United States discovered Soviet offensive missile sites in Cuba in October 1962; the U.S.-Soviet confrontation was the cold war's closest brush with nuclear war.

When U.S. satellite photos showed Soviet missile bases in Cuba, President Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba. The tense standoff nearly caused a nuclear war in 1962.

In 1962, the United States and Soviet Union came close to nuclear war when the United States insisted that the Soviets remove their missiles from Cuba. The Soviets eventually did so, nuclear war was averted, and the crisis passed.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation during the Cold War between the Cubans and the United States regarding the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles 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, and most significantly, Turkey. The crisis began on October 16, 1962 when U.S. reconnaissance imagery revealing Soviet nuclear missile installations on the island were shown to U.S.