One of the most serious and frightening events in the cold war between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. occurred October 28, 1962. What was it?

The world held its breath for thirteen tense days in October 1962 after U.S. reconnaissance planes discovered that the Soviet Union was secretly installing nuclear missile sites in Cuba, just 90 miles from the coast of Florida. This discovery triggered a terrifying standoff between U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The U.S. established a naval "quarantine" around the island to block more Soviet ships, bringing the two nuclear-armed superpowers to the very brink of war.

The crisis reached its climax on October 27, when a U.S. spy plane was shot down over Cuba. However, through back-channel negotiations, a deal was struck. On October 28, the world exhaled as Khrushchev publicly announced over Radio Moscow that the missile installations would be dismantled and returned to the U.S.S.R. In exchange, the United States publicly pledged not to invade Cuba.

Secretly, the U.S. also agreed to later remove its own nuclear missiles from Turkey, which had been a major motivation for the Soviet move in the first place. The event is considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. In its aftermath, the Moscow-Washington hotline was established to allow for direct communication between the two leaders during future crises.