On October 22nd, 1962, at 7:00 PM EST, President John F. Kennedy delivered one of the most consequential televised addresses in United States history. Reporting from the Oval Office, he informed a stunned global audience that U.S. surveillance had discovered that the Soviet Union had built nuclear missile sites in Cuba and were holding the weapons in those locations. This 18-minute address officially inaugurated the public phase of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the world has ever come to a full-scale thermonuclear war. It is estimated that nearly 50 million Americans watched the address live, an incredible figure that represented 75% of the television sets in the country. The speech was also broadcast via the Telstar satellite, which was the first telecommunications satellite, which was launched into orbit in July 1962, making it one of the first truly global live media events.
