Cuban Missile Crisis
Thirteen days on the brink of nuclear war
In October 1962 the US discovered Soviet missiles in Cuba and imposed a naval quarantine. For thirteen days the world stood on the brink of nuclear war until Khrushchev and Kennedy agreed: the USSR removed its missiles, the US pledged not to invade Cuba and withdrew missiles from Turkey.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 23 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 15 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 14 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 13 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 18 years later
Europe
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 21 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 9 years earlier
- 1957 Treaty of Rome — 5 years earlier
- 1961 Berlin Wall built — 1 year earlier
- 1968 May 1968 in France — 6 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 21 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 20 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 17 years earlier
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 5 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 1 year earlier
Middle East
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 14 years earlier
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 17 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 18 years later
Africa
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 4 years earlier
- 1960 Year of Africa — 2 years earlier
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 1 year later
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 5 years later
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 5 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 17 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 9 years earlier
- 1958–1962 Great Leap Forward — 4 years earlier
- 1964 First Shinkansen high-speed railway — 2 years later
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 13 years later
Oceania
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 21 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 20 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 8 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 3 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 88)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 81)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 73)
- Mao Zedong (aged 69)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 44)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 33)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 32)
- Yuri Gagarin (aged 28)
- Harry S. Truman (aged 78)
- Anna Akhmatova (aged 73)