Cuban missile crisis

A confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962 over the presence of missile sites in Cuba ; one of the “hottest” periods of the cold war . The Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev , placed Soviet military missiles in Cuba, which had come under Soviet influence after the success of the Cuban Revolution three years earlier. President John F. Kennedy of the United States set up a naval blockade of Cuba and insisted that Khrushchev remove the missiles. Khrushchev did so.