1950s - American-owned businesses controlled all of Cuba's oil production, 90% of its mines, and roughly half of all its railroad, sugar, and cattle industries. Havana had become an attractive tourist destination for Americans and US crime syndicates shared control of the island's lucrative gambling, prostitution, and drug trade with General Fulgencio Batista, the dictator who had ruled Cuba for years and who was one of America's greatest allies.

1959 - On January 1, Fidel Castro officially took control of Cuba after leading a six-year successful revolt against Batista.

• In October, the US and Turkey signed an agreement for the deployment of 15 nuclear-tipped Jupiter missiles in Turkey.  The location in Turkey where the missiles were placed is as geographically near to the Soviet Union as Cuba is to the US.

1960 - In May, Cuba and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations.

• In July, the US suspended the Cuban sugar quota, effectively cutting of 80% of Cuban exports to the US.  The Soviet Union agreed to buy sugar previously destined for the US market.
• In August, the US initiated the first of many assassination plots against Castro. The plan was the first of at least eight assassination atttempts devised by the US government between 1960-1965.  (1975 Senate Investigation hearings).  The US imposed an embargo on trade with Cuba.
• In October, Cuba nationalized approximately one billion dollars in US private investments on the island.
• In December, Cuba and the Soviet Union issued a joint communique in which Cuba openly aligned itself with the domestic and foreign policies of the Soviet Union and indicated its solidarity with the Sino-Soviet Bloc.

1961 - In early January, the US and Cuba severed diplomatic and consular relations.

• On January 20, John F. Kennedy became the 35th president of the US.  One of his first foreign policy decisions was to build up America's nuclear and conventional weapons systems. 
  • Between 1960 and 1962, defense appropriations increased by nearly a third from $43 to $56 billion.
  • Next, he expanded Eisenhower's policy of covert operations by deploying the army's elite Special Forces (later known as the Green Berets) as a supplement to CIA cover operations in counterinsurgency battles against third world guerrilla armies that were trying to topple various dictatorships who were staunch anti-Communists.  Whenever the President believed Soviet influence threatened American interests, he could deploy these Special Forces soldiers to provide a  "rapid response."
• In April, a group of B-26 bombers piloted by Cuban exiles attacked air bases in Cuba.  The raid, coordinated by the CIA, was designed to destroy as much as Castro's air power as possible and was based upon the assumption that a US-led invasion would trigger a popular uprising of the Cuban people and bring down Castro. 
  • On April 17, 1400 counter-revolutionaries led by CIA operatives landed at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba's south coast. 
  • Cuba's army quickly subdued them and the Bay of Pigs became a foreign and domestic political disaster for Kennedy.
• Soon thereafter, Castro arrested 200,000 suspected dissidents to prevent internal uprisings.  Many intellectuals and professionals began to flee to the US.
• In November, President Kennedy authorized a covert action program aimed at overthrowing the Cuban government - Operation Mongoose.  Within two months, the program declared it was developing "a strongly motivated political action movement" within Cuba capable of generating a revolt that would lead to the downfall of Castro.

1962  - In April, the US Jupiter missiles in Turkey became operational.  All positions were reported "ready and manned" by US personnel.  Later that month, Khrushchev began discussions in Moscow to deploy similar weapons in Cuba

• In May, a Soviet delegation to Cuba told Castro that the Soviet Union was prepared to help Cuba fortify its defenses against a possible US invasion, even to the extent of deploying nuclear missiles.  Cuba accepted.
• Throughout the summer, the Soviets shipped to Cuba a large amount of sophisticated weaponry, including intermediate-range nuclear missiles. 
• By August, US intelligence began receiving reports of Soviet missiles in Cuba. 
• On August 29th, a U-2 surveillance flight provided conclusive evidence of SA-2 SAM missile sites at eight different locations in Cuba.  Pressure on Kennedy favored an invasion and after the disastrous Bay of Pigs incident, he did not want to by accused of being weak and failing to stand up to the Soviets.
• In September, a plan was approved for a coordinated tactical air attack on Cuba in advance of an airborne assault and amphibious landing. with October 20th set as the date for completion of all preparations.
• On October 22, President Kennedy announced on national television the discovery of the missile sites, demanded the removal of all missiles, ordered a strict naval blockade of all offensive military equipment shipped to Cuba, and promised that any missiles launched from Cuba would bring "a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union."
• On October 27, Khrushchev yielded and ordered 25 Soviet ships off their course to Cuba which, in turn, avoided a challenge to the American blockade.  He then offered to remove all the missiles from Cuba if the US pledged not to invade Cuba.  Attorney General Robert Kennedy made a secret agreement with Khrushchev that the US would dismantle the Jupiter missiles in Turkey.
• In November, President Kennedy publicly announced the withdrawal of Soviet missiles and bombers from Cuba, pledged US respect of Cuban sovereignty, and promised that US forces would not invade the island.  The crisis was officially over.

1963 - the Soviets, determined not to be intimated again, began the largest weapons buildup in their history.

• In June, President Kennedy called for a rethinking of Cold War diplomacy.  At an address to American University, he said that both sides had been "caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion  on one side breeds suspicion on the  other, and new weapons beget counterweapons."  It was important "not to see only a distorted an desperate view of the other sideÖ . No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue."
• In August, the US, Soviet Union, and Great Britain signed the Limited Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty prohibiting above ground, outer space, and underwater nuclear weapons tests.  It was more symbolic than substantive as testing continued - but it was a psychological breakthrough after three  intense years of Cold War actions.
  

1. It brought the US closer to a nuclear war than any other confrontation before or sense.
2. There are two very important sides to this crisis, not just the American side.  In fact, the US had been waging a war against Cuba since Castro's coming to power in 1959.  That war consisted of planned assassination attempts against Castro, and over a year's worth of foreign policy strategies designed to overthrow the Cuban government from within the nation.  The Soviet Union and Cuba had very good reasons to fear a US invasion - they knew Kennedy had greatly increased his defense spending and had rapidly built up our strategic forces.
3. The Soviet Union acted in a seemingly irrational way - by bringing missiles to Cuba even though they had very few and could not defend themselves against the US - because it feared the overthrow of Cuba.    Thus, the US should be more prudent in trying to overthrow or threaten other governments - as they will not always act rationally.
4. We did not avoid nuclear war with Cuba because the U.S.  forced the Soviet Union to back down; instead, we avoided war largely because the Soviets, in the words of Professor of International Studies at American University, Phillip Brenner, has written, because the Soviets "showed restraint throughout the crisis."

Edward R. Murrow interview with Fidel Castro in 1959 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en5RenIJHDo&feature=related