In a seven-minute televised address, President John F. Kennedy announced that U-2 reconnaissance flights had photographed Soviet medium-range ballistic missile sites under construction in Cuba. He announced a naval quarantine of the island and put the U.S. military on high alert, pushing the Cold War to its most dangerous edge.
Kennedy had known about the missiles for six days, deliberating in secret with his advisers, the group later called ExComm, over whether to bomb the sites, invade, or blockade. He chose the least escalatory option available and framed it publicly as a 'quarantine' rather than a 'blockade,' since a blockade was technically an act of war under international law.
Across the country, families listened in living rooms and grocery stores emptied of canned goods. Soviet ships continued steaming toward Cuba as Kennedy spoke, and no one—including Kennedy himself—knew whether Khrushchev would turn them back or press forward into what could have become a nuclear exchange.
The crisis would not resolve for another six days, ending only after backchannel negotiations produced a secret trade: US withdrawal of missiles from Turkey for Soviet withdrawal from Cuba, a deal kept hidden from the public for decades.