On the Occasion of the Invasion

captured U.S.-backed Cuban exiles Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

No one could have written a more dramatic or nerve-racking story. On April 17, 1961, a group of Cuban exiles aided by the CIA invaded Cuba, landing in a spot known to the English-speaking world as the Bay of Pigs. The mission was more than unsuccessful; it was an embarrassment for then-President John F. Kennedy and for the United States, and it pushed Cuban leader Fidel Castro into the waiting arms of the Soviet Union, then led by Nikita Khrushchev. It also amped up the Cold War, in part leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis and taking us, by all accounts, to the brink of war (interactive and video timeline): http://cloudsovercuba.com/