Do you know any little known important/interesting facts about the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Question

this is for my groups natiopnal history day (NHD) project

Answer 1

1. We didn't learn until 1993, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that the senior Soviet military commander in Cuba had launch authority for both the intermediate range missiles and the "Frog" short-range missiles which were to be used against any invasion force. He did not have to get permission from Moscow before launching the missiles.
2. The Marine Brigadier General who commanded the Fifth Marine Expeditionary Brigade at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba during the Missile Crisis became one of the nuclear weapons protestors at the Nevada Test Site after his retirement from the Marine Corps.
3. The lead Navy warship for the task force which set up the Naval Quarantine of Cuba was USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (DD 850), named for the brother of President Kennedy who died during World War Two.

Answer 2

I believe the go-between in the back-channel talks between the US and USSR was John Scali, ABC's diplomatic correspondent.

I also liked the fact that Khruschev sent two messages to Washington with totally different messages. Kennedy essentially designed to ignore the nasty one and answer the conciliatory one.

Answer 3

An interesting fact is that we stopped recognizing Cuba because of Russian missiles and now recognize Russia but not Cuba.

Answer 4

one funny story i learned from my friends in miami: when the US opened it's doors to all cubans who wanted to flee oppression and tyranny, the ensuing mass of people who floated to miami was not oppressed people seeking freedom. they were criminals. castro essentially emptied out all his prisons and jails! an added bonus for him was that he got lots of new space in the prisons for anybody else who spoke out against his regime. i know this was quite a bit after the missile crisis, but it is an interesting story not a lot of americans know about.