Fidel Castro died at 90

[Mugwump]

...I was a 'bagger', 'boxboy' at Ralph's Grocery in La Crescenta during the Cuban crisis. Still in high school, it was a strange time. I remember loading carts, and carts, of groceries for families stocking up, just in case those big A-bombs started dropping around the world.

[wallace]

"When they settled down to sleep the first night in the cane field, Castro said he was determined not to be taken alive. He lay with his rifle on his chest with the barrel under his chin and his finger on the trigger, saying he would shoot himself if the Rural Guard found them."

Our neighbor in Sacramento had an underground bomb shelter. I thought the lid was like the hatch on a kind of submarine.

[waterboy]

The Cuban missile crisis was the closest this country has ever come to nuclear war.  There were people with their finger actually on the buttons getting ready to push them. If Gorbachev hadn't backed off when he did we wouldn't be here today. 

[BallAquatics]

It was Nikita Khrushchev, Gorbachev didn't become  leader of the Soviet Union until 1985.

Dennis

[waterboy]

You are right as always, senior moment.

[BallAquatics]

You are right as always, senior moment.

That's what I had when I read it.  Huh, was he Russian leader for that many years???  I think it was the .....chev  Just Khrush instead of Gorba  LOL   

Dennis

[waterboy]

Yes they all sound the same to me.  I was in the service in japan so it was nothing more that another alert at the time.  But I read an article by someone close to the goings on about twenty years later. Don't remember when or who wrote it but I remember that the article scared the heck out of me to realize just how close they actually were to launching the nukes.

[Mugwump]

I was a senior in HS then...it sure got us worked up a bit....in History and Government classes it was thoroughly discussed daily.....plus we lived about 2 miles from JPL.....and many of my friends had a parent(s) working there........we had a bulls eye on our homes in that area....

[wallace]

"Only Arkhipov, as flotilla commander and second-in-command of the nuclear-missile submarine B-59, refused to authorize the captain's use of nuclear torpedoes against the United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard. In 2002 Thomas Blanton, who was then director of the US National Security Archive, said that "Vasili Arkhipov saved the world".

Here is the story:

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/05/vasili-arkhipov-the-man-who-saved-the-world/