The Cuban Missile Crisis was an event that marked the peak of the cold war. The name was given by the Americans as they viewed the act by the Soviets as a great threat to its national security.
The entire crisis lasted only thirteen days in October 1962. The crisis officially started when U2-spyplanes from the US spotted Soviet Missile Bases in Cuba, where missiles could be targeted at nearly every major city in the US.
The crisis was resolved after leaders from both sides reached an agreement, whereby the Soviets would remove the missiles from Cuba and the Americans in return promised not to invade Cuba and remove its own missiles from Turkey.
To this day, many still view the crisis as the closest moment mankind had came to a full scale nuclear war.
And here's a Russian Source, we tend to mostly find American ones since we're studying History in English, but its good to look at what the Russians think about the Crisis too. Here'e Khrushchev's son, Sergei on the Crisis. Khrushchev on the Cuban Missile Crisis