Friday, September 30, 2011

Twitter Ye Not - The Cuban Missile Crisis


Twitter Ye Not - The Cuban Missile Crisis

A regular piece for the Daily Mail Weekend magazine about how figures in history might have twittered or tweeted or whatever, had they the chance, inclination and technology.

On October 14 1962, an American U2 surveillance plane flying over Cuba photographed a Soviet missile site under construction. Those photographs precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis, now regarded as the closest the Cold War came to a nuclear conflict. Here, we imagine the Twitter feed for that tense week-end.

On the left I have shown British premier Harold Macmillan, known affectionately as SuperMac, looking on anxiously at Soviet missiles pointed towards the West, and puffing away nervously on his habitual pipe. Opposite him stands Cuban president Fidel Castro, also puffing away, but not at all nervously, on an Havana cigar (possibly not rolled on the thighs of a Cuban beauty).

This incident, of course, more closely involved US president JFK and Soviet president Nikita Krushchev, but I have already done those two for the Twitter feed regarding Kennedy's famous 'Ich Bin Ein Doughnut' speech.

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