Pinnacle of the cold war: The Cuban missile crisis

The Cuban missile crisis was the pinnacle of a particularly tense time in US-Soviet relations. The crisis also represented the closest the world has ever been to nuclear war on a global scale. The Soviet Union's humiliation in Cuba is widely thought to have played a role in Khrushchev's fall from power in October 1964, as well as the Soviet Union's desire to attain, at the very least, nuclear parity with the United States.