Episode 8.16

An American U2 spy fight discovered Soviet missiles in Cuba. The American military chiefs wanted an invasion of Cuba but President Kennedy decides above a naval blockade of Cuba instead. President Kennedy address the nation on television to tell them of the Soviet missiles now ba ...  Show more

An American U2 spy plane is shot down over Cuba by a Soviet Surface to Air missile. The tension between the United States and the Soviet Union increases but President Kennedy decides not to bomb Cuba. He uses a message from the Soviet leader to end the crisis and the Soviet nucle ...  Show more

By the end of July 1914, the world hovered on the edge of a cataclysmic world war; Austria was at war with Serbia, Russia with Germany, and an ultimatum had been handed to Belgium. The July crisis had resolved itself in the most calamitous way possible. But how did this state of ...  Show more

“We have been forced to draw the sword”. Following the expiry of Austria’s Ultimatum on Saturday 25th July 1914, the Kaiser and the Tsar - friends and cousins, long desirous of peace between their two nations - found themselves in a new and highly precarious situation. Even so, t ...  Show more

On the 20th of July 1914 the heads of state of two great European powers - France and Russia - met in St Petersburg. Little did they know, though they may have suspected, that the Austrians were simultaneously writing up an Ultimatum, and waiting for the departure of the French t ...  Show more

In the wake of the cataclysmic assassination of Franz Ferdinand on the 28th of June 1914, in Austria, the long percolating question of what to do about Serbia, reached a climax. At last, they had been handed an opportunity to take decisive action. On Sunday 5th of July an emissar ...  Show more