That JFK, huh. Philanderer, possible mutant, and the man who started his country on the way to landing on the Moon. When he was shot by either the CIA, a lone gunman or people hanging out on a grassy knoll remains up for debate, but it tends to be accepted that John F Kennedy is the greatest president America never had. Or didn't have for long enough to live up to his full potential. We're not sure if people mean potential in terms of things he could've done as head of state or just the amount of women he could've cheated on his wife with, but anyway, we think he left quite a mark on history as it is. And not the just the stains in that Texan motorcade, but the fact that he brought the world to the edge of oblivion like nobody has before or since. The Cuban missile crisis is one of those Ronseal jobbies: it was a crisis, involving Cuba and nuclear missiles. America has had it out for Castro's Communist republic for decades, standing on their lawn and shaking their first at the cool kids across the road who keep giving them the finger, but they're separated by an ocean and international treaties, or something. That metaphor kinda collapsed. Just as the planet nearly collapsed as a result of a monumental cock up on the global stage in the space of two weeks. It was the first time that the US military went up to DEFCON 2, the second highest nuclear threat level. Eep. After the US had placed nuclear missiles in Turkey and Italy, aimed at Moscow, Russia decided to pay them back in kind by secretly constructing some silos in Cuba. Having already failed to topple Castro's government America were less than pleased with this development, and so pretty much every country in the Western world was aiming nukes at each other, like a Mexican stand-off where everybody dies and the ground beneath them remains inhospitable for a good century or so. You know that twist ending of Planet Of The Apes? No, the original one. Yeah, there's a reason people thought that might actually happen. The Mutually Assured Destruction more than the talking monkeys. Oh and during that time there were scheduled missile tests that nobody thought to cancel and were taken as acts of aggression, bears mistaken as Russian saboteurs being shot, and various other terrible things that all should've added up to the end of the world and, honestly, we're still not sure how we avoided it.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
