Tensions were at their highest from October 8, 1962. On October 14, United States reconnaissance saw the missile bases being built in Cuba. The crisis ended two weeks later on October 28, 1962, when the President of the United States John F. Kennedy and the United Nations Secretary-General U Thant reached an agreement with the USSR to destroy the missiles in Cuba if the US agreed to avoid invading Cuba. Khrushchev wanted the Jupiter and Thor missiles in Turkey to be removed. The US removed them but forced Khrushchev to keep that a secret.
In Cuba, Fidel Castro took power from General Batista on January 1, 1959. From 1952 to 1959, Batista was a military dictator in Cuba, very right-wing with Mafia connections & the support of the Eisenhower administration. The United States was interested in Cuba because of the many businesses that they had there, even though the country was a dictatorship. The countries were also military friends. This was shown by the US base at Guantánamo Bay.
When Castro came to power in Cuba, he nationalized American companies in Cuba, meaning he took the private property from those companies and made it the property of Cuba, to use as Castro decided. The United States decided to break off economic relations with Cuba (which means that they would stop buying things from them).
They stopped American foreign aid going to Cuba, and stopped buying Cuban sugar (which was Cuba's main export). This was a disaster for Castro, because America bought the most Cuban sugar. However, Russia saved the Cuban economy by buying Cuban sugar for high prices.
Castro turned to the USSR, a great power. He signed a contract with Nikita Khrushchev, the Russian chairman at the time. The contract said that the USSR would buy 1 million tons of Cuban sugar per year, in exchange for Castro's Communist support; he declared himself a Marxist-Leninist on December 2, 1961.
The reasons that Khrushchev wanted to help Cuba were:
Castro wanted to feel safe from the United States. He knew that if a second attack was made from the United States, Cuba might lose and he would be removed from power. Castro asked Khrushchev for the missile sites to be built on Cuba so that he could defend himself against any American threat. The USSR agreed to this and started building missile sites on Cuba. These missiles could hit any major city in the United States
When Kennedy found out about the missile sites on October 16, by sending a United States Navy U-2 Spy Plane to take pictures of Cuba, he saw the missile sites and thought the worst: that Cuba was preparing to attack the United States.
The US was angry when they found out about the missile sites. Kennedy's advisers did not think that the missiles were ready when they first saw the pictures but thought that they would be ready in less than two weeks (that gave the name of the movie and the book, called "13 Days").
Kennedy had to act fast. At first, he did not know what he could do. Options were not clear so he started EXCOMM (Executive Committee of the National Security Council) to give him some options:
On October 20, Kennedy chose to blockade Cuba to stop all ships going there, rather than listen to his advisers, who wanted to attack.
The USSR's first ships arrived at the blockade on October 25 and were prevented by the US Navy from reaching Cuba.
Nikita Khrushchev sent a letter to Kennedy on October 26. Kennedy's advisers said that the letter looked like it had been written by Khrushchev himself and not his official writers, who would normally write it. They also said that it seemed to be written by a man who was under stress. In a paper called "Forty Years After 13 Days," Robert McNamara quoted part of the letter from Khrushchev:
Khrushchev was saying that he would remove the missile sites if President Kennedy promised not to invade Cuba. An invasion of Cuba would make Khrushchev look bad and could also lead to a nuclear war. This was the reaction that Kennedy wanted.
The very next day, a second letter was sent from Russia to Kennedy. This one looked more official than the first. It also said that the US must take its nuclear missiles out of Turkey if they wanted Russia to take their missiles out of Cuba. This would have been a fair trade because the US missiles in Turkey were close enough to Russia that they could reach most of the important cities and Cuba was close enough to the US that the Russian missiles would reach most of the important US cities. The problem for Kennedy was that he could not publicly agree to remove the US missiles from Turkey because Turkey would then not be protected and would not be happy.
Another problem was that Kennedy and his advisers did not know if Khrushchev was still in power. They thought that someone in the Russian government might have overthrown Khrushchev. They thought this because the second letter was so much different than the first. Kennedy decided to send a secret message to Khrushchev saying that they would remove the missiles from Turkey in a few months as long as they did not tell the public about it. Kennedy then sent an official letter to Khrushchev agreeing to the conditions of the first letter and not mentioning the second.
Khrushchev agreed to the secret message.
On November 1, the missile sites were removed, and the problems were over.
Khrushchev's goals in the crisis had various results:
The United States saw Kennedy as the hero who had fought Communism and won.
For students' use
Complex
Berber people
Berbers (also called Amazighs, "free men") are an ethnic group found natively in the countries of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia in North Africa, and also found as immigrants in many countries, especially France. Berbers usually speak the Berber language. Berbers were both nomadic and land owners according to the region they live in. Most Berbers are Muslims or follow the native animist Berber religion.
Prosencephalon
The prosencephalon (or forebrain), the mesencephalon (midbrain), and rhombencephalon (hindbrain) are the three primary portions of the brain of vertebrates. They develop very early during development of the central nervous system.
When the embryonic prosencephalon fails to divide the brain into two lobes, it results in a condition known as holoprosencephaly.
Gag
A gag is any thing used to stop a person from speaking. This is done by blocking or muffling the person's mouth and making it difficult for them to move their jaw and tongue in a normal way.
Gags are very commonly seen in BDSM and bondage fantasy. Many different items can be used, ranging from a hand simply clamped over the victim's mouth, to a scarf tied between the jaws, to adhesive tape placed over the mouth and face to seal the lips. There are also many kinds of specially-made gags, which usually strap around or behind the head. Special gags of that kind are usually made from leather or rubber.
In real life it is quite difficult to gag a person in such a way that their speech cannot be understood at all, and it is almost impossible to prevent a gagged person from making some kind of sound. It is also a risk to the person's safety, as the more tightly and securely someone is gagged, the greater the risk that they will choke or suffocate.
Stepchild
Stepchild could mean:
Meänkieli dialects
Meänkieli (also known as "Tornedalian Finnish", meaning "our language") is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in the River Torne valley in the north of Sweden, above the Arctic Circle. It is an official minority language of Sweden. The language could be seen as a mix between Finnish and Swedish, since it has been changed a lot by Swedish.
For many years, Swedish was the only language to be taught in the schools of the Torne valley. The population became bilingual. They spoke both Finnish and Swedish, but they were mostly only able to write in Swedish. Today many people in the younger generations only speak Swedish. Since 1999, Meänkieli is an official minority language of Sweden.