Cuban missile crisis begins, October 16, 1962
National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy steps into the president’s bedroom. What he is about to say could change the course of history. “There is now hard photographic evidence that the Russians have offensive missiles in Cuba.” Six Soviet medium-range missile sites and twenty-one medium-range bombers are now just ninety miles from the United States. They are capable of delivering nuclear warheads that could kill eighty million people within a matter of minutes. Millions more would die later from the radioactive fallout. American forces around the world immediately prepare for war.