Cuban Missile Crisis

On October 14, 1962, a U.S. reconnaissance flight provided the final, definitive proof that the Soviet Union was attempting to build missile bases in Cuba. The ensuing crisis was one of the defining moments of the Cold War, and likely the closest the world has ever come to all-out nuclear annihilation.

Priscilla Roberts, PhD, is associate professor of history and honorary director of the Centre of American Studies at the University of Hong Kong. She read history at King's College, Cambridge, where she also earned her doctorate in history. She has published numerous books and articles, among them Window on the Forbidden City: The Beijing Diaries of David Bruce, 1973-1974; Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia; and Lord Lothian and Anglo-American Relations, 1900-1940.