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Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Aerial photograph of Soviet freighter Volgoles carrying missiles away from Cuba back to the USSR on 9 November 1962, following the de-escalation of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A US Navy destroyer, the USS Vesole (DDR-878), is escorting the vessel. The wingtip of the plane from which the photograph is being taken, an SP-2 Neptune, is also visible. Soviet construction of nuclear missile sites in Cuba led US President John F. Kennedy to order a naval blockade of the island. The following stand-off brought the world to the brink of nuclear warfare. The crisis ended on 28 October 1962, when Soviet Premier Khrushchev announced that the Cuban sites would be dismantled. (KEYSTONE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/US NAVY/US NATIONAL ARCHIVES/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)