It’s October 1962, and you’ve never been so scared in your life. The Soviet Union has missiles in Cuba. That’s an island nation just 90 miles from Florida!
President Kennedy is on TV. He says more Soviet missiles are on the way to Cuba. But he’s not going to let a communist country keep terrible weapons that close to the United States. It seems like the whole world is afraid a nuclear war is going to start. Fortunately, about a week later, the Soviet Union agrees to remove its missiles from Cuba.
A crisis is a very difficult or dangerous situation. In the 1960s, the Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the hardest things the U.S. had ever faced. However, the decade was full of challenges and changes. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had to decide how the country would face those changes.
