Question

Which event occurred in October 1962, sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis?



Khrushchev and Kennedy had a disagreement at the Vienna Summit.

The Berlin Wall was constructed as a division between East Berlin and West Berlin.

A troop of trained exiles attempted a failed invasion into Cuba.

A US spy plane photographed a Soviet missile base on Cuba.

Answer 1

A US spy plane photographed a Soviet missile base on Cuba.

Missiles in Cuba would be able to reach most of the United States much faster than any NATO missiles could reach the Soviet Union, potentially disrupting the fragile balance of mutually assured destruction and priming the world for nuclear world war. The United States saw this danger, and took a stand to remove the missiles preemptively, leading to the tense standoff now known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was the absolute closest the world ever got to total thermonuclear war.