10 Incredible What-Ifs That Could Have Changed The Course Of History

4. ...Shots Had Been Fired During The Cuban Missile Crisis?

This fact doesn't really need to be hammered home any further, but just in case it wasn't well-known enough, of the many occasions throughout the Cold War when tensions arose and the world almost descended into a nuclear war, at no time did the globe come closer to an atomic apocalypse than during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.

The 13-day confrontation between the USA and the USSR lasted from 14th October until the 28th October, and arose out of a conflict over the Soviet Union deploying ballistic missiles in Cuba, which is just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. With the USA having embarrassingly failed during the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba a year previously, President John F Kennedy wanted to make a point to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that he would not be bullied - but the latter wanted America to withdraw their Jupiter ballistic missiles from Italy and Turkey.

In order to reduce tensions during the US blockade of Cuba, the Soviets agreed to publicly declare that they would dismantle the weapons and return them to the USSR, while privately Kennedy also insisted that all American-built Jupiter MRBMs in Europe would also be destroyed. Although negotiations tried to prevent a nuclear World War III from occurring, if just one American, Soviet, or Cuban soldier had fired upon the other side during the Missile Crisis then it is almost certain that the globe would have descended into conflict.

Nuclear war would likely have completely destroyed the planet - thankfully, it hasn't happen...yet.