Tales of History and Imagination

On 16th October 1962, American President John F Kennedy was presented with three indistinct photos taken of several tubes laid out in a field in Cuba. Kennedy at first took the scene for a football field. His brother Robert, on viewing the scene, wondered if it depicted a farm house in mid construction.

It was, of course, a nuclear missile site in mid construction, and the following thirteen days brought humanity closer to nuclear war than any time before of since.

This fortnight, and next we’re looking at the Cuban Missile Crisis, primarily from the perspective of three potentially inciting incidents - one involving two saboteurs, another a spy plane, and the third a Foxtrot submarine.

Sources Include:

One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs

And Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen

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Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly

- with one credit I needs must acknowledge today. I stole the melody for the marimba music that plays under the Miguel Orozco parts from the verses of Jimmy Soul’s ‘If You Wanna Be Happy.’

Soul, in turn, had stolen that melody from the Trinidadian Calypso great Roaring Lion’s ‘Ugly Woman’ - no commentary meant on either artist, Mrs Soul or Mrs Lion - just needed a melody from that general location…