Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center has created this site as a resource for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Designed to help policymakers, students, and interested citizens draw lessons from these critical events half a century ago, this site not only provides background on the crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster in October 1962 but also offers tools to understand how it can inform contemporary policy.
President Kennedy addresses the nation on the evening of Monday, October 22, 1962, as the threat of Soviet missiles in Cuba nears its peak. This version of President Kennedy's Cuban Missile Crisis speech is complete and unedited.
Historic newsreel footage about the Cuban Missile Crisis from October 25, 1962. Adlai Stevenson speaks at the UN.
Historic newsreel footage about the easing of the Cuban Missile Crisis from October 29, 1962.