The Cuban Missile Crisis , also known as the October Crisis ( Spanish : Crisis de Octubre ) in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis ( Russian : Карибский кризис, romanized : Karibskiy krizis ), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union , when American deployments of nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of nuclear missiles in Cuba . The crisis lasted from 16 to 28 October 1962. The confrontation is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war . [1]
