Cuban Missile Crisis

The closest the world has come to nuclear war was the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. This was the tense cold war opposition between the United States and the Soviet Union.   The Soviet Union had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of the United States
The Cold War was the result of a clash between communism and capitalism, two opposing world-views. Another cause of the build up to the Cold War was the intransigent attitude of both sides. The Soviet Union was extremely concerned about its security after having been invaded twice in the twentieth century. In 1945 America created and used the atomic bomb against Japan and the USSR was determined to create one of its own. Both the USSR and the USA built up huge arsenals of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). The United States tested a hydrogen bomb in 1952 and in November 1955, the USSR developed one too. After that the USA moved its bombers into Europe. In 1955 West Germany was allowed to re-arm and join NATO. Russia responded by forming the Warsaw Mutual Defense Pact with its buffer zone neighbors.
In 1957 the Soviets used a missile to launch Sputnik 1 into orbit around the earth. The arms race evolved into a space race as the United States rushed to launch its own satellites. The space race was an opportunity for the two nations to show their technological superiority. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, the first orbiting satellite, on October 4, 1957. On November 3, they launched Sputnik II with the first living creature, a dog, named Laika.
On January 31, 1958 the United States launched Explorer I, its first satellite. The U.S. began its Mercury program with an 18-minute flight on January 31, 1961 that carried a chimpanzee. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, had its Vostok program and on April 12, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space and completed one orbit aboard Vostok 1. In June 1963 Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. The United States...