title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: On October 16, President Kennedy notified Attorney General Robert Kennedy that he was convinced the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba and it was a legitimate threat. This made the threat of nuclear destruction by two world superpowers a reality. Robert Kennedy responded by contacting the Soviet Ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin. Robert Kennedy expressed his "concern about what was happening" and Dobrynin "was instructed by Soviet Chairman Nikita S. Khrushchev to assure President Kennedy that there would be no ground-to-ground missiles or offensive weapons placed in Cuba". Khrushchev further assured Kennedy that the Soviet Union had no intention of "disrupting the relationship of our two countries" despite the photo evidence presented before President Kennedy.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The US had no plan in place because until recently its intelligence had been convinced that the Soviets would never install nuclear missiles in Cuba. EXCOMM discussed several possible courses of action:


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously agreed that a full-scale attack and invasion was the only solution. They believed that the Soviets would not attempt to stop the US from conquering Cuba. Kennedy was skeptical:


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Kennedy concluded that attacking Cuba by air would signal the Soviets to presume "a clear line" to conquer Berlin. Kennedy also believed that US allies would think of the country as "trigger-happy cowboys" who lost Berlin because they could not peacefully resolve the Cuban situation.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The EXCOMM then discussed the effect on the strategic balance of power, both political and military. The Joint Chiefs of Staff believed that the missiles would seriously alter the military balance, but McNamara disagreed. An extra 40, he reasoned, would make little difference to the overall strategic balance. The US already had approximately 5,000 strategic warheads, but the Soviet Union had only 300. McNamara concluded that the Soviets having 340 would not therefore substantially alter the strategic balance. In 1990, he reiterated that "it made "no" difference... The military balance wasn't changed. I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now."


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The EXCOMM agreed that the missiles would affect the "political" balance. Kennedy had explicitly promised the American people less than a month before the crisis that "if Cuba should possess a capacity to carry out offensive actions against the United States... the United States would act." Further, US credibility among its allies and people would be damaged if the Soviet Union appeared to redress the strategic imbalance by placing missiles in Cuba. Kennedy explained after the crisis that "it would have politically changed the balance of power. It would have appeared to, and appearances contribute to reality."


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: On October 18, Kennedy met with Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko, who claimed the weapons were for defensive purposes only. Not wanting to expose what he already knew and to avoid panicking the American public, Kennedy did not reveal that he was already aware of the missile buildup. By October 19, frequent U-2 spy flights showed four operational sites.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Two Operational Plans (OPLAN) were considered. OPLAN 316 envisioned a full invasion of Cuba by Army and Marine units, supported by the Navy, following Air Force and naval airstrikes. Army units in the US would have had trouble fielding mechanised and logistical assets, and the US Navy could not supply enough amphibious shipping to transport even a modest armoured contingent from the Army.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: OPLAN 312, primarily an Air Force and Navy carrier operation, was designed with enough flexibility to do anything from engaging individual missile sites to providing air support for OPLAN 316's ground forces.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Kennedy met with members of EXCOMM and other top advisers throughout October 21, considering two remaining options: an air strike primarily against the Cuban missile bases or a naval blockade of Cuba. A full-scale invasion was not the administration's first option. McNamara supported the naval blockade as a strong but limited military action that left the US in control. The term "blockade" was problematic. According to international law, a blockade is an act of war, but the Kennedy administration did not think that the Soviets would be provoked to attack by a mere blockade. Additionally, legal experts at the State Department and Justice Department concluded that a declaration of war could be avoided if another legal justification, based on the Rio Treaty for defence of the Western Hemisphere, was obtained from a resolution by a two-thirds vote from the members of the Organization of American States (OAS).


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Admiral George Anderson, Chief of Naval Operations wrote a position paper that helped Kennedy to differentiate between what they termed a "quarantine" of offensive weapons and a blockade of all materials, claiming that a classic blockade was not the original intention. Since it would take place in international waters, Kennedy obtained the approval of the OAS for military action under the hemispheric defence provisions of the Rio Treaty:


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: On October 19, the EXCOMM formed separate working groups to examine the air strike and blockade options, and by the afternoon most support in the EXCOMM shifted to blockade. Reservations about the plan continued to be voiced as late as October 21, the paramount concern being that once the blockade was put into effect, the Soviets would rush to complete some of the missiles. Consequently, the US could find itself bombing operational missiles if the blockade did not force Khrushchev to remove the missiles already on the island.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: At 3:00 pm EDT on October 22, President Kennedy formally established the executive committee (EXCOMM) with National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 196. At 5:00 pm, he met with Congressional leaders, who contentiously opposed a blockade and demanded a stronger response. In Moscow, US Ambassador Foy D. Kohler briefed Khrushchev on the pending blockade and Kennedy's speech to the nation. Ambassadors around the world gave notice to non-Eastern Bloc leaders. Before the speech, US delegations met with Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, French President Charles de Gaulle and Secretary-General of the Organization of American States, José Antonio Mora to brief them on this intelligence and the US's proposed response. All were supportive of the US position. Over the course of the crisis, Kennedy had daily telephone conversations with Macmillan, who was publicly supportive of US actions.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Shortly before his speech, Kennedy telephoned former President Dwight Eisenhower. Kennedy's conversation with the former president also revealed that the two had been consulting during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The two also anticipated that Khrushchev would respond to the Western world in a manner similar to his response during the Suez Crisis, and would possibly wind up trading off Berlin.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: On October 22 at 7:00 pm EDT, Kennedy delivered a nationwide televised address on all of the major networks announcing the discovery of the missiles. He noted:


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: During the speech, a directive went out to all US forces worldwide, placing them on DEFCON 3. The heavy cruiser was the designated flagship for the blockade, with as "Newport News"s destroyer escort. Kennedy's speech writer Ted Sorensen stated in 2007 that the address to the nation was "Kennedy's most important speech historically, in terms of its impact on our planet."


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: On October 24, at 11:24 am EDT, a cable, drafted by George Wildman Ball to the US Ambassador in Turkey and NATO, notified them that they were considering making an offer to withdraw the missiles from Italy and Turkey, in exchange for the Soviet withdrawal from Cuba. Turkish officials replied that they would "deeply resent" any trade involving the US missile presence in their country. One day later, on the morning of October 25, American journalist Walter Lippmann proposed the same thing in his syndicated column. Castro reaffirmed Cuba's right to self-defense and said that all of its weapons were defensive and Cuba would not allow an inspection.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Three days after Kennedy's speech, the Chinese "People's Daily" announced that "650,000,000 Chinese men and women were standing by the Cuban people." In West Germany, newspapers supported the US response by contrasting it with the weak American actions in the region during the preceding months. They also expressed some fear that the Soviets might retaliate in Berlin. In France on October 23, the crisis made the front page of all the daily newspapers. The next day, an editorial in "Le Monde" expressed doubt about the authenticity of the CIA's photographic evidence. Two days later, after a visit by a high-ranking CIA agent, the newspaper accepted the validity of the photographs. In the October 29 issue of "Le Figaro", Raymond Aron wrote in support of the American response. On October 24, Pope John XXIII sent a message to the Soviet embassy in Rome, to be transmitted to the Kremlin, in which he voiced his concern for peace. In this message he stated, "We beg all governments not to remain deaf to this cry of humanity. That they do all that is in their power to save peace."


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The crisis continued unabated, and on the evening of October 24, the Soviet TASS news agency broadcast a telegram from Khrushchev to Kennedy, in which Khrushchev warned that the United States' "outright piracy" would lead to war. Khruschev then sent at 9:24 pm a telegram to Kennedy, which was received at 10:52 pm EDT. Khrushchev stated, "if you weigh the present situation with a cool head without giving way to passion, you will understand that the Soviet Union cannot afford not to decline the despotic demands of the USA" and that the Soviet Union viewed the blockade as "an act of aggression", and their ships would be instructed to ignore it. After October 23, Soviet communications with the USA increasingly showed indications of having been rushed. Undoubtedly a product of pressure, it was not uncommon for Khrushchev to repeat himself and to send messages lacking basic editing. With President Kennedy making his aggressive intentions of a possible airstrike followed by an invasion on Cuba known, Khrushchev rapidly sought a diplomatic compromise. Communications between the two superpowers had entered into a unique and revolutionary period; with the newly-developed threat of mutual destruction through the deployment of nuclear weapons, diplomacy now demonstrated how power and coercion could dominate negotiations.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The US requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on October 25. US Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson confronted Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin in an emergency meeting of the Security Council, challenging him to admit the existence of the missiles. Ambassador Zorin refused to answer. The next day at 10:00 pm EDT, the US raised the readiness level of Strategic Air Command (SAC) forces to DEFCON 2. For the only confirmed time in US history, B-52 bombers went on continuous airborne alert, and B-47 medium bombers were dispersed to various military and civilian airfields and made ready to take off, fully equipped, on 15 minutes' notice. One-eighth of SAC's 1,436 bombers were on airborne alert, and some 145 intercontinental ballistic missiles stood on ready alert, some of which targeted Cuba. Air Defense Command (ADC) redeployed 161 nuclear-armed interceptors to 16 dispersal fields within nine hours, with one third maintaining 15-minute alert status. Twenty-three nuclear-armed B-52s were sent to orbit points within striking distance of the Soviet Union so it would believe that the US was serious. Jack J. Catton later estimated that about 80 per cent of SAC's planes were ready for launch during the crisis; David A. Burchinal recalled that, by contrast:


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: By October 22, Tactical Air Command (TAC) had 511 fighters, plus supporting tankers and reconnaissance aircraft, deployed to face Cuba on one-hour alert status. TAC and the Military Air Transport Service had problems. The concentration of aircraft in Florida strained command and support echelons, which faced critical undermanning in security, armaments, and communications; the absence of initial authorization for war-reserve stocks of conventional munitions forced TAC to scrounge; and the lack of airlift assets to support a major airborne drop necessitated the call-up of 24 reserve squadrons.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: On October 25 at 1:45 am EDT, Kennedy responded to Khrushchev's telegram by stating that the US was forced into action after receiving repeated assurances that no offensive missiles were being placed in Cuba, and when the assurances proved to be false, the deployment "required the responses I have announced... I hope that your government will take necessary action to permit a restoration of the earlier situation."


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: At 7:15 am EDT on October 25, and attempted to intercept "Bucharest" but failed to do so. Fairly certain that the tanker did not contain any military material, the US allowed it through the blockade. Later that day, at 5:43 pm, the commander of the blockade effort ordered the destroyer to intercept and board the Lebanese freighter "Marucla". That took place the next day, and "Marucla" was cleared through the blockade after its cargo was checked.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: At 5:00 pm EDT on October 25, William Clements announced that the missiles in Cuba were still actively being worked on. That report was later verified by a CIA report that suggested there had been no slowdown at all. In response, Kennedy issued Security Action Memorandum 199, authorizing the loading of nuclear weapons onto aircraft under the command of SACEUR, which had the duty of carrying out first air strikes on the Soviet Union. Kennedy claimed that the blockade had succeeded when the USSR turned back fourteen ships presumably carrying offensive weapons. The first indication of this came from a report from the British GCHQ sent to the White House Situation Room containing intercepted communications from Soviet ships reporting their positions. On October 24, "Kislovodsk," a Soviet cargo ship, reported a position north-east of where it had been 24 hours earlier indicating it had "discontinued" its voyage and turned back towards the Baltic. The next day, reports showed more ships originally bound for Cuba had altered their course.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The next morning, October 26, Kennedy informed the EXCOMM that he believed only an invasion would remove the missiles from Cuba. He was persuaded to give the matter time and continue with both military and diplomatic pressure. He agreed and ordered the low-level flights over the island to be increased from two per day to once every two hours. He also ordered a crash program to institute a new civil government in Cuba if an invasion went ahead.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: At this point, the crisis was ostensibly at a stalemate. The Soviets had shown no indication that they would back down and had made public media and private inter-governmental statements to that effect. The US had no reason to believe otherwise and was in the early stages of preparing for an invasion, along with a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union if it responded militarily, which the US assumed it would. Kennedy had no intention of keeping these plans a secret; with an array of Cuban and Soviet spies forever present, Khrushchev was quickly made aware of this looming danger.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The implicit threat of air strikes on Cuba followed by invasion allowed the United States to exert pressure in future talks. It was the possibility of military action that played an influential role in accelerating Khrushchev's proposal for a compromise. Throughout the closing stages of October, Soviet communications to the United States indicated increasing defensiveness. Khrushchev's increasing tendency to use poorly phrased and ambiguous communications throughout the compromise negotiations conversely increased United States confidence and clarity in messaging. Leading Soviet figures consistently failed to mention that only the Cuban government could agree to inspections of the territory and continually made arrangements relating to Cuba without the knowledge of Fidel Castro himself. According to Dean Rusk, Khrushchev "blinked"; he began to panic from the consequences of his own plan, and this was reflected in the tone of Soviet messages. This allowed the US to largely dominate negotiations in late October.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: At 1:00 pm EDT on October 26, John A. Scali of ABC News had lunch with Aleksandr Fomin, the cover name of Alexander Feklisov, the KGB station chief in Washington, at Fomin's request. Following the instructions of the Politburo of the CPSU, Fomin noted, "War seems about to break out." He asked Scali to use his contacts to talk to his "high-level friends" at the State Department to see if the US would be interested in a diplomatic solution. He suggested that the language of the deal would contain an assurance from the Soviet Union to remove the weapons under UN supervision and that Castro would publicly announce that he would not accept such weapons again in exchange for a public statement by the US that it would not invade Cuba. The US responded by asking the Brazilian government to pass a message to Castro that the US would be "unlikely to invade" if the missiles were removed.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: On October 26 at 6:00 pm EDT, the State Department started receiving a message that appeared to be written personally by Khrushchev. It was Saturday 2:00 am in Moscow. The long letter took several minutes to arrive, and it took translators additional time to translate and transcribe it.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Robert F. Kennedy described the letter as "very long and emotional". Khrushchev reiterated the basic outline that had been stated to Scali earlier in the day: "I propose: we, for our part, will declare that our ships bound for Cuba are not carrying any armaments. You will declare that the United States will not invade Cuba with its troops and will not support any other forces which might intend to invade Cuba. Then the necessity of the presence of our military specialists in Cuba will disappear." At 6:45 pm EDT, news of Fomin's offer to Scali was finally heard and was interpreted as a "set up" for the arrival of Khrushchev's letter. The letter was then considered official and accurate, although it was later learned that Fomin was almost certainly operating of his own accord without official backing. Additional study of the letter was ordered and continued into the night.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Castro, on the other hand, was convinced that an invasion of Cuba was soon at hand, and on October 26, he sent a telegram to Khrushchev that appeared to call for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US in case of attack. In a 2010 interview, Castro expressed regret about his 1962 stance on first use: "After I've seen what I've seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn't worth it at all." Castro also ordered all anti-aircraft weapons in Cuba to fire on any US aircraft; previous orders had been to fire only on groups of two or more. At 6:00 am EDT on October 27, the CIA delivered a memo reporting that three of the four missile sites at San Cristobal and both sites at Sagua la Grande appeared to be fully operational. It also noted that the Cuban military continued to organise for action but was under order not to initiate action unless attacked.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: At 9:00 am EDT on October 27, Radio Moscow began broadcasting a message from Khrushchev. Contrary to the letter of the night before, the message offered a new trade: the missiles on Cuba would be removed in exchange for the removal of the Jupiter missiles from Italy and Turkey. At 10:00 am EDT, the executive committee met again to discuss the situation and came to the conclusion that the change in the message was because of internal debate between Khrushchev and other party officials in the Kremlin. Kennedy realised that he would be in an "insupportable position if this becomes Khrushchev's proposal" because the missiles in Turkey were not militarily useful and were being removed anyway and "It's gonna – to any man at the United Nations or any other rational man, it will look like a very fair trade." Bundy explained why Khrushchev's public acquiescence could not be considered: "The current threat to peace is not in Turkey, it is in Cuba."


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: McNamara noted that another tanker, the "Grozny", was about out and should be intercepted. He also noted that they had not made the Soviets aware of the blockade line and suggested relaying that information to them via U Thant at the United Nations.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: While the meeting progressed, at 11:03 am EDT a new message began to arrive from Khrushchev. The message stated, in part:


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: "You are disturbed over Cuba. You say that this disturbs you because it is ninety-nine miles by sea from the coast of the United States of America. But... you have placed destructive missile weapons, which you call offensive, in Italy and Turkey, literally next to us... I therefore make this proposal: We are willing to remove from Cuba the means which you regard as offensive... Your representatives will make a declaration to the effect that the United States... will remove its analogous means from Turkey... and after that, persons entrusted by the United Nations Security Council could inspect on the spot the fulfillment of the pledges made."


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Throughout the crisis, Turkey had repeatedly stated that it would be upset if the Jupiter missiles were removed. Italy's Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani, who was also Foreign Minister "ad interim", offered to allow withdrawal of the missiles deployed in Apulia as a bargaining chip. He gave the message to one of his most trusted friends, Ettore Bernabei, general manager of RAI-TV, to convey to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Bernabei was in New York to attend an international conference on satellite TV broadcasting.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: On the morning of October 27, a U-2F (the third CIA U-2A, modified for air-to-air refuelling) piloted by USAF Major Rudolf Anderson, departed its forward operating location at McCoy AFB, Florida. At approximately 12:00 pm EDT, the aircraft was struck by an SA-2 surface-to-air missile launched from Cuba. The aircraft crashed, and Anderson was killed. Stress in negotiations between the Soviets and the US intensified; only later was it assumed that the decision to fire the missile was made locally by an undetermined Soviet commander, acting on his own authority. Later that day, at about 3:41 pm EDT, several US Navy RF-8A Crusader aircraft, on low-level photo-reconnaissance missions, were fired upon.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: On October 28, 1962, Khrushchev told his son Sergei that the shooting down of Anderson's U-2 was by the "Cuban military at the direction of Raul Castro".


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: At 4:00 pm EDT, Kennedy recalled members of EXCOMM to the White House and ordered that a message should immediately be sent to U Thant asking the Soviets to suspend work on the missiles while negotiations were carried out. During the meeting, General Maxwell Taylor delivered the news that the U-2 had been shot down. Kennedy had earlier claimed he would order an attack on such sites if fired upon, but he decided to not act unless another attack was made. Forty years later, McNamara said:


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Ellsberg said that Robert Kennedy (RFK) told him in 1964 that after the U-2 was shot down and the pilot killed, he (RFK) told Soviet ambassador Dobrynin, "You have drawn first blood ... . [T]he president had decided against advice ... not to respond militarily to that attack, but he [Dobrynin] should know that if another plane was shot at, ... we would take out all the SAMs and antiaircraft ... . And that would almost surely be followed by an invasion."


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Emissaries sent by both Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed to meet at the Yenching Palace Chinese restaurant in the Cleveland Park neighbourhood of Washington, DC, on Saturday evening, October 27. Kennedy suggested to take Khrushchev's offer to trade away the missiles. Unknown to most members of the EXCOMM, but with the support of his brother the president, Robert Kennedy had been meeting with the Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin in Washington to discover whether the intentions were genuine. The EXCOMM was generally against the proposal because it would undermine NATO's authority, and the Turkish government had repeatedly stated it was against any such trade.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: As the meeting progressed, a new plan emerged, and Kennedy was slowly persuaded. The new plan called for him to ignore the latest message and instead to return to Khrushchev's earlier one. Kennedy was initially hesitant, feeling that Khrushchev would no longer accept the deal because a new one had been offered, but Llewellyn Thompson argued that it was still possible. White House Special Counsel and Adviser Ted Sorensen and Robert Kennedy left the meeting and returned 45 minutes later, with a draft letter to that effect. The President made several changes, had it typed, and sent it.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: After the EXCOMM meeting, a smaller meeting continued in the Oval Office. The group argued that the letter should be underscored with an oral message to Dobrynin that stated that if the missiles were not withdrawn, military action would be used to remove them. Rusk added one proviso that no part of the language of the deal would mention Turkey, but there would be an understanding that the missiles would be removed "voluntarily" in the immediate aftermath. The president agreed, and the message was sent.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: At Rusk's request, Fomin and Scali met again. Scali asked why the two letters from Khrushchev were so different, and Fomin claimed it was because of "poor communications". Scali replied that the claim was not credible and shouted that he thought it was a "stinking double cross". He went on to claim that an invasion was only hours away, and Fomin stated that a response to the US message was expected from Khrushchev shortly and urged Scali to tell the State Department that no treachery was intended. Scali said that he did not think anyone would believe him, but he agreed to deliver the message. The two went their separate ways, and Scali immediately typed out a memo for the EXCOMM.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Within the US establishment, it was well understood that ignoring the second offer and returning to the first put Khrushchev in a terrible position. Military preparations continued, and all active duty Air Force personnel were recalled to their bases for possible action. Robert Kennedy later recalled the mood: "We had not abandoned all hope, but what hope there was now rested with Khrushchev's revising his course within the next few hours. It was a hope, not an expectation. The expectation was military confrontation by Tuesday (October 30), and possibly tomorrow (October 29) ..."


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: At 8:05 pm EDT, the letter drafted earlier in the day was delivered. The message read, "As I read your letter, the key elements of your proposals—which seem generally acceptable as I understand them—are as follows: 1) You would agree to remove these weapons systems from Cuba under appropriate United Nations observation and supervision; and undertake, with suitable safe-guards, to halt the further introduction of such weapon systems into Cuba. 2) We, on our part, would agree—upon the establishment of adequate arrangements through the United Nations, to ensure the carrying out and continuation of these commitments (a) to remove promptly the quarantine measures now in effect and (b) to give assurances against the invasion of Cuba." The letter was also released directly to the press to ensure it could not be "delayed". With the letter delivered, a deal was on the table. As Robert Kennedy noted, there was little expectation it would be accepted. At 9:00 pm EDT, the EXCOMM met again to review the actions for the following day. Plans were drawn up for air strikes on the missile sites as well as other economic targets, notably petroleum storage. McNamara stated that they had to "have two things ready: a government for Cuba, because we're going to need one; and secondly, plans for how to respond to the Soviet Union in Europe, because sure as hell they're going to do something there".


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: At 12:12 am EDT, on October 27, the US informed its NATO allies that "the situation is growing shorter... the United States may find it necessary within a very short time in its interest and that of its fellow nations in the Western Hemisphere to take whatever military action may be necessary." To add to the concern, at 6:00 am, the CIA reported that all missiles in Cuba were ready for action.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: On October 27, Khrushchev also received a letter from Castro, what is now known as the Armageddon Letter (dated the day before), which was interpreted as urging the use of nuclear force in the event of an attack on Cuba: "I believe the imperialists' aggressiveness is extremely dangerous and if they actually carry out the brutal act of invading Cuba in violation of international law and morality, that would be the moment to eliminate such danger forever through an act of clear legitimate defense, however harsh and terrible the solution would be," Castro wrote.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Later that same day, what the White House later called "Black Saturday", the US Navy dropped a series of "signalling" depth charges (practice depth charges the size of hand grenades) on a Soviet submarine () at the blockade line, unaware that it was armed with a nuclear-tipped torpedo with orders that allowed it to be used if the submarine was damaged by depth charges or surface fire. As the submarine was too deep to monitor any radio traffic, the captain of the "B-59", Valentin Grigoryevich Savitsky, decided that a war might already have started and wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo. The decision to launch these normally only required agreement from the two commanding officers on board, the Captain and the Political Officer. However, the commander of the submarine Flotilla, Vasily Arkhipov, was aboard "B-59" and so he also had to agree. Arkhipov objected and so the nuclear launch was narrowly averted.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: On the same day a U-2 spy plane made an accidental, unauthorised ninety-minute overflight of the Soviet Union's far eastern coast. The Soviets responded by scrambling MiG fighters from Wrangel Island; in turn, the Americans launched F-102 fighters armed with nuclear air-to-air missiles over the Bering Sea.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: On Saturday, October 27, after much deliberation between the Soviet Union and Kennedy's cabinet, Kennedy secretly agreed to remove all missiles set in Turkey and possibly southern Italy, the former on the border of the Soviet Union, in exchange for Khrushchev removing all missiles in Cuba. There is some dispute as to whether removing the missiles from Italy was part of the secret agreement. Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that it was, and when the crisis had ended McNamara gave the order to dismantle the missiles in both Italy and Turkey.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: At this point, Khrushchev knew things the US did not. First, that the shooting down of the U-2 by a Soviet missile violated direct orders from Moscow, and Cuban anti-aircraft fire against other US reconnaissance aircraft also violated direct orders from Khrushchev to Castro. Second, the Soviets already had 162 nuclear warheads on Cuba that the US did not then believe were there. Third, the Soviets and Cubans on the island would almost certainly have responded to an invasion by using those nuclear weapons, even though Castro believed that every human in Cuba would likely die as a result. Khrushchev also knew but may not have considered the fact that he had submarines armed with nuclear weapons that the US Navy may not have known about.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Khrushchev knew he was losing control. President Kennedy had been told in early 1961 that a nuclear war would likely kill a third of humanity, with most or all of those deaths concentrated in the US, the USSR, Europe and China; Khrushchev may well have received similar reports from his military.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: With this background, when Khrushchev heard Kennedy's threats relayed by Robert Kennedy to Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin, he immediately drafted his acceptance of Kennedy's latest terms from his dacha without involving the Politburo, as he had previously, and had them immediately broadcast over Radio Moscow, which he believed the US would hear. In that broadcast at 9:00 am EST, on October 28, Khrushchev stated that "the Soviet government, in addition to previously issued instructions on the cessation of further work at the building sites for the weapons, has issued a new order on the dismantling of the weapons which you describe as 'offensive' and their crating and return to the Soviet Union." At 10:00 am, October 28, Kennedy first learned of Khrushchev's solution to the crisis with the US removing the 15 Jupiters in Turkey and the Soviets would remove the rockets from Cuba. Khrushchev had made the offer in a public statement for the world to hear. Despite almost solid opposition from his senior advisers, Kennedy quickly embraced the Soviet offer. "This is a pretty good play of his," Kennedy said, according to a tape recording that he made secretly of the Cabinet Room meeting. Kennedy had deployed the Jupiters in March of the year, causing a stream of angry outbursts from Khrushchev. "Most people will think this is a rather even trade and we ought to take advantage of it," Kennedy said. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was the first to endorse the missile swap but others continued to oppose the offer. Finally, Kennedy ended the debate. "We can't very well invade Cuba with all its toil and blood," Kennedy said, "when we could have gotten them out by making a deal on the same missiles on Turkey. If that's part of the record, then you don't have a very good war."


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Kennedy immediately responded to Khrushchev's letter, issuing a statement calling it "an important and constructive contribution to peace". He continued this with a formal letter:


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Kennedy's planned statement would also contain suggestions he had received from his adviser Schlesinger Jr. in a "Memorandum for the President" describing the "Post Mortem on Cuba".


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: On October 28, Kennedy participated in telephone conversations with Eisenhower and fellow former US President Harry Truman. In these calls, Kennedy revealed that he thought the crisis would result in the two superpowers being "toe to toe" in Berlin by the end of the following month and expressed concern that the Soviet setback in Cuba would "make things tougher" there. He also informed his predecessors that he had rejected the public Soviet offer to withdraw from Cuba in exchange for the withdrawal of US missiles from Turkey.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The US continued the blockade; in the following days, aerial reconnaissance proved that the Soviets were making progress in removing the missile systems. The 42 missiles and their support equipment were loaded onto eight Soviet ships. On November 2, 1962, Kennedy addressed the US via radio and television broadcasts regarding the dismantlement process of the Soviet R-12 missile bases located in the Caribbean region. The ships left Cuba on November 5 to 9. The US made a final visual check as each of the ships passed the blockade line. Further diplomatic efforts were required to remove the Soviet Il-28 bombers, and they were loaded on three Soviet ships on December 5 and 6. Concurrent with the Soviet commitment on the Il-28s, the US government announced the end of the blockade from 6:45 pm EST on November 20, 1962.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: At the time when the Kennedy administration thought that the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved, nuclear tactical rockets stayed in Cuba since they were not part of the Kennedy-Khrushchev understandings and the Americans did not know about them. The Soviets changed their minds, fearing possible future Cuban militant steps, and on November 22, 1962, Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union Anastas Mikoyan told Castro that the rockets with the nuclear warheads were being removed as well.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: In his negotiations with the Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, Robert Kennedy informally proposed that the Jupiter missiles in Turkey would be removed "within a short time after this crisis was over". Under an operation code-named "Operation Pot Pie," the removal of the Jupiters from Italy and Turkey began on 1 April and was completed by 24 April 1963. The initial plans were to recycle the missiles for use in other programs, but NASA and the USAF were not interested in retaining the missile hardware. The missile bodies were destroyed on site, warheads, guidance packages, and launching equipment worth $14 million were returned to the United States.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The practical effect of the Kennedy-Khrushchev Pact was that the US would remove their rockets from Italy and Turkey and that the Soviets had no intention of resorting to nuclear war if they were out-gunned by the US. Because the withdrawal of the Jupiter missiles from NATO bases in Italy and Turkey was not made public at the time, Khrushchev appeared to have lost the conflict and become weakened. The perception was that Kennedy had won the contest between the superpowers and that Khrushchev had been humiliated. Both Kennedy and Khrushchev took every step to avoid full conflict despite pressures from their respective governments. Khrushchev held power for another two years.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: By the time of the crisis in October 1962, the total number of nuclear weapons in the stockpiles of each country numbered approximately 26,400 for the United States and 3,300 for the Soviet Union. For the U.S., around 3,500 (with a combined yield of approximately 6,300 megatons) would have been used in attacking the Soviet Union. The Soviets had considerably less strategic firepower at their disposal: some 300–320 bombs and warheads, without submarine-based weapons in a position to threaten the U.S. mainland and most of their intercontinental delivery systems based on bombers that would have difficulty penetrating North American air defence systems. However, they had already moved 158 warheads to Cuba; between 95 and 100 would have been ready for use if the U.S. had invaded Cuba, most of which were short-ranged. The U.S. had approximately 4,375 nuclear weapons deployed in Europe, most of which were tactical weapons such as nuclear artillery, with around 450 of them for ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and aircraft; the Soviets had more than 550 similar weapons in Europe.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Cuba perceived the outcome as a betrayal by the Soviets, as decisions on how to resolve the crisis had been made exclusively by Kennedy and Khrushchev. Castro was especially upset that certain issues of interest to Cuba, such as the status of the US Naval Base in Guantánamo, were not addressed. That caused Cuban–Soviet relations to deteriorate for years to come.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Historian Arthur Schlesinger believed that when the missiles were withdrawn, Castro was more angry with Khrushchev than with Kennedy because Khrushchev had not consulted Castro before deciding to remove them. Although Castro was infuriated by Khrushchev, he planned on striking the US with the remaining missiles if an invasion of the island occurred.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: A few weeks after the crisis, during an interview with the British communist newspaper the "Daily Worker", Guevara was still fuming over the perceived Soviet betrayal and told correspondent Sam Russell that, if the missiles had been under Cuban control, they would have fired them off. While expounding on the incident later, Guevara reiterated that the cause of socialist liberation against global "imperialist aggression" would ultimately have been worth the possibility of "millions of atomic war victims". The missile crisis further convinced Guevara that the world's two superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union) used Cuba as a pawn in their own global strategies. Afterward, he denounced the Soviets almost as frequently as he denounced the Americans.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: During the crisis, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, general secretary of Romania's communist party, sent a letter to President Kennedy dissociating Romania from Soviet actions. This convinced the American administration of Bucharest's intentions of detaching itself from Moscow.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The enormity of how close the world came to thermonuclear war impelled Khrushchev to propose a far-reaching easing of tensions with the US. In a letter to President Kennedy dated October 30, 1962, Khrushchev outlined a range of bold initiatives to forestall the possibility of a further nuclear crisis, including proposing a non-aggression treaty between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact or even disbanding these military blocs, a treaty to cease all nuclear weapons testing and even the elimination of all nuclear weapons, resolution of the hot-button issue of Germany by both East and West formally accepting the existence of West Germany and East Germany, and US recognition of the government of mainland China. The letter invited counter-proposals and further exploration of these and other issues through peaceful negotiations. Khrushchev invited Norman Cousins, the editor of a major US periodical and an anti-nuclear weapons activist, to serve as liaison with President Kennedy, and Cousins met with Khrushchev for four hours in December 1962.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Kennedy's response to Khrushchev's proposals was lukewarm but Kennedy expressed to Cousins that he felt constrained in exploring these issues due to pressure from hardliners in the US national security apparatus. The US and the USSR did shortly thereafter agree on a treaty banning atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, known as the "Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty".


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Further after the crisis, the US and the Soviet Union created the Moscow–Washington hotline, a direct communications link between Moscow and Washington. The purpose was to have a way that the leaders of the two Cold War countries could communicate directly to solve such a crisis.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The compromise embarrassed Khrushchev and the Soviet Union because the withdrawal of US missiles from Italy and Turkey was a secret deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Khrushchev went to Kennedy as he thought that the crisis was getting out of hand, but the Soviets were seen as retreating from circumstances that they had started.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Khrushchev's fall from power two years later was in part because of the Soviet Politburo's embarrassment at both Khrushchev's eventual concessions to the US and this ineptitude in precipitating the crisis in the first place. According to Dobrynin, the top Soviet leadership took the Cuban outcome as "a blow to its prestige bordering on humiliation".


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The worldwide US Forces DEFCON 3 status was returned to DEFCON 4 on November 20, 1962. General Curtis LeMay told the President that the resolution of the crisis was the "greatest defeat in our history"; his was a minority position. He had pressed for an immediate invasion of Cuba as soon as the crisis began and still favored invading Cuba even after the Soviets had withdrawn their missiles. Twenty-five years later, LeMay still believed that "We could have gotten not only the missiles out of Cuba, we could have gotten the Communists out of Cuba at that time."


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: By 1962 President Kennedy faced four crisis situations: the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion that he had approved of, settlement negotiations between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement ("Kennedy sidestepped Laos, whose rugged terrain was no battleground for American soldiers."), the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy believed that yet another failure to gain control and stop communist expansion would irreparably damage U.S. credibility. He was determined to "draw a line in the sand" and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. He told James Reston of "The New York Times" immediately after his Vienna summit meeting with Khrushchev, "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place."


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: At least four contingency strikes were armed and launched from Florida against Cuban airfields and suspected missile sites in 1963 and 1964, although all were diverted to the Pinecastle Range Complex after the planes passed Andros island. Critics, including Seymour Melman and Seymour Hersh, suggested that the Cuban Missile Crisis encouraged the United States' use of military means, such as the case in the later Vietnam War.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: U-2 pilot Anderson's body was returned to the US and was buried with full military honours in South Carolina. He was the first recipient of the newly created Air Force Cross, which was awarded posthumously. Although Anderson was the only combatant fatality during the crisis, 11 crew members of three reconnaissance Boeing RB-47 Stratojets of the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing were also killed in crashes during the period between September 27 and November 11, 1962. Seven crew died when a Military Air Transport Service Boeing C-135B Stratolifter delivering ammunition to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base stalled and crashed on approach on October 23.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Arguably, the most dangerous moment in the crisis was not recognized until the Cuban Missile Crisis Havana conference, in October 2002. Attended by many of the veterans of the crisis, they all learned that on October 27, 1962, had tracked and dropped signalling depth charges (the size of hand grenades) on , a Soviet Project 641 (NATO designation ) submarine. Unknown to the US, it was armed with a 15-kiloton nuclear torpedo. Running out of air, the Soviet submarine was surrounded by American warships and desperately needed to surface. An argument broke out among three officers aboard "B-59", including submarine captain Valentin Savitsky, political officer Ivan Semyonovich Maslennikov, and Deputy brigade commander Captain 2nd rank (US Navy Commander rank equivalent) Vasily Arkhipov. An exhausted Savitsky became furious and ordered that the nuclear torpedo on board be made combat ready. Accounts differ about whether Arkhipov convinced Savitsky not to make the attack or whether Savitsky himself finally concluded that the only reasonable choice left open to him was to come to the surface. During the conference, McNamara stated that nuclear war had come much closer than people had thought. Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, said, "A guy called Vasily Arkhipov saved the world."


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: In early 1992, it was confirmed that Soviet forces in Cuba had already received tactical nuclear warheads for their artillery rockets and Il-28 bombers when the crisis broke. Castro stated that he would have recommended their use if the US invaded despite Cuba being destroyed.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: BBC journalist Joe Matthews published the story, on October 13, 2012, behind the 100 tactical nuclear warheads mentioned by Graham Allison in the excerpt above. Khrushchev feared that Castro's hurt pride and widespread Cuban indignation over the concessions he had made to Kennedy might lead to a breakdown of the agreement between the Soviet Union and the US. To prevent that, Khrushchev decided to offer to give Cuba more than 100 tactical nuclear weapons that had been shipped to Cuba along with the long-range missiles but, crucially, had escaped the notice of US intelligence. Khrushchev determined that because the Americans had not listed the missiles on their list of demands, keeping them in Cuba would be in the Soviet Union's interests.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Anastas Mikoyan was tasked with the negotiations with Castro over the missile transfer deal that was designed to prevent a breakdown in the relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union. While in Havana, Mikoyan witnessed the mood swings and paranoia of Castro, who was convinced that Moscow had made the agreement with the US at the expense of Cuba's defence. Mikoyan, on his own initiative, decided that Castro and his military should not be given control of weapons with an explosive force equal to 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs under any circumstances. He defused the seemingly intractable situation, which risked re-escalating the crisis, on November 22, 1962. During a tense, four-hour meeting, Mikoyan convinced Castro that despite Moscow's desire to help, it would be in breach of an unpublished Soviet law, which did not actually exist, to transfer the missiles permanently into Cuban hands and provide them with an independent nuclear deterrent. Castro was forced to give way and, much to the relief of Khrushchev and the rest of the Soviet government, the tactical nuclear weapons were crated and returned by sea to the Soviet Union during December 1962.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: The American popular media, especially television, made frequent use of the events of the missile crisis in both fictional and documentary forms. Jim Willis includes the Crisis as one of the 100 "media moments that changed America". Sheldon Stern finds that a half century later there are still many "misconceptions, half-truths, and outright lies" that have shaped media versions of what happened in the White House during those harrowing two weeks.


title: Cuban Missile Crisis

text: Historian William Cohn argued in a 1976 article that television programs are typically the main source used by the American public to know about and interpret the past. According to Cold War historian Andrei Kozovoi, the Soviet media proved somewhat disorganized as it was unable to generate a coherent popular history. Khrushchev lost power and was airbrushed out of the story. Cuba was no longer portrayed as a heroic David against the American Goliath. One contradiction that pervaded the Soviet media campaign was between the pacifistic rhetoric of the peace movement that emphasizes the horrors of nuclear war and the militancy of the need to prepare Soviets for war against American aggression.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: Christopher Allen Lloyd (born October 22, 1938) is an American actor. He has appeared in many theater productions, films, and on television since the 1960s. He is known for portraying Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown in the "Back to the Future" trilogy (1985–1990); and Jim Ignatowski in the comedy series "Taxi" (1978–1983), for which he won two Emmy Awards.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: Lloyd came to public attention in Northeastern theater productions during the 1960s and early 1970s, earning Drama Desk and Obie awards for his work. He made his cinematic debut in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), and his television debut in "The Adams Chronicles" the following year. He also starred as Commander Kruge in "" (1984), Professor Plum in "Clue" (1985), Judge Doom in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988), and Uncle Fester in "The Addams Family" (1991) and its sequel "Addams Family Values" (1993).


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: He earned a third Emmy for his 1992 guest appearance as Alistair Dimple in "Road to Avonlea" (1992), and won an Independent Spirit Award for his performance in "Twenty Bucks" (1993). He has done extensive voice work, including Merlock in "" (1990), Grigori Rasputin in "Anastasia" (1997), the Woodsman in the Cartoon Network miniseries "Over the Garden Wall" (2014), and the Hacker in the PBS Kids series "Cyberchase" (2002–present), which earned him two further Emmy nominations. He has also been nominated for two Saturn Awards and a BIFA.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: Lloyd was born on October 22, 1938, in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Ruth Lloyd (née Lapham; 1896–1984), a singer and sister of San Francisco mayor Roger Lapham, and her lawyer husband Samuel R. Lloyd Jr. He is the youngest of three boys and four girls, one of whom, Samuel Lloyd, was an actor in the 1950s and 1960s. Lloyd's maternal grandfather, Lewis Henry Lapham, was one of the founders of the Texaco oil company, and Lloyd is also a descendant of "Mayflower" passengers, including John Howland. Lloyd was raised in Westport, Connecticut, where he attended Staples High School and was involved in founding the high school's theater company, the Staples Players.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: Lloyd began his career apprenticing at summer theaters in Mount Kisco, New York, and Hyannis, Massachusetts. He took acting classes in New York City at age 19—some at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre with Sanford Meisner—and he recalled making his New York theater debut in a 1961 production of Fernando Arrabal's play "And They Put Handcuffs on the Flowers", saying, "I was a replacement and it was my first sort of job in New York." He made his Broadway debut in the short-lived "Red, White and Maddox" (1969), and went on to Off-Broadway roles in "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Kaspar" (February 1973), "The Harlot and the Hunted", "The Seagull" (January 1974), "Total Eclipse" (February 1974), "Macbeth", "In the Boom Boom Room", "Cracks", "Professional Resident Company", "What Every Woman Knows", "The Father", "King Lear", "Power Failure" and, in mid-1972, appeared in a Jean Cocteau double bill, "Orphée" and "The Human Voice", at the Jean Cocteau Theater at 43 Bond Street.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: Lloyd returned to Broadway for the musical "Happy End". He performed in Andrzej Wajda's adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Possessed" at Yale Repertory Theater, and in Jay Broad's premiere of "White Pelican" at the P.A.F. Playhouse in Huntington Station, New York, on Long Island.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: In 1977, he said of his training at the Neighborhood Playhouse under Meisner, "My work up to then had been very uneven. I would be good one night, dull the next. Meisner made me aware of how to be consistent in using the best that I have to offer. But I guess nobody can teach you the knack, or whatever it is, that helps you come to life on stage."


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: His first film role was psychiatric patient Max Taber in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), alongside future co-star Danny DeVito. He is known for his work as "Reverend" Jim Ignatowski, the ex-hippie cabbie on the sitcom "Taxi", for which he won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series; and the eccentric inventor Emmett "Doc" Brown in the "Back to the Future" trilogy for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award. In 1985, he appeared in the pilot episode of "Street Hawk". The following year, he played the reviled Professor B.O. Beanes on the television series "Amazing Stories". Other roles include Klingon Commander Kruge in "" (1984) (on suggestion of fellow actor and friend Leonard Nimoy), Professor Plum in "Clue" (1985), Professor Dimple in an episode of "Road to Avonlea" (for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series), the villain Judge Doom in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988), Merlock the Sorcerer in "DuckTales the Movie" (1990), Switchblade Sam in "Dennis the Menace" (1993), Zoltan in "Radioland Murders" (1994), and Uncle Fester in "The Addams Family" (1991) and "Addams Family Values" (1993).


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: Lloyd portrayed the star character in the adventure game "Toonstruck", released in November 1996. In 1999, he was reunited onscreen with Michael J. Fox in an episode of "Spin City" entitled "Back to the Future IV — Judgment Day", in which Lloyd plays Owen Kingston, the former mentor of Fox's character, Mike Flaherty, who stopped by City Hall to see Kingston, only to proclaim himself God. That same year, Lloyd starred in the film remake of the 1960s series "My Favorite Martian". He starred on the television series "Deadly Games" in the mid-1990s and was a regular on the sitcom "Stacked" in the mid-2000s. In 2003, he guest-starred in three of the 13 produced episodes of "Tremors: The Series" as the character Cletus Poffenburger. In November 2007, Lloyd was reunited onscreen with his former "Taxi" co-star Judd Hirsch in the season-four episode "Graphic" of the television series "Numb3rs" as Ross Moore. He then played the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in a 2008 production of "A Christmas Carol" at the Kodak Theatre with John Goodman and Jane Leeves. In 2009, he appeared in a comedic trailer for a faux horror film version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory entitled "Gobstopper", in which he played Willy Wonka as a horror-film-style villain.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: In mid-2010, he starred as Willy Loman in a Weston Playhouse production of "Death of a Salesman". That September, he reprised his role as Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown in "", an episodic adventure game series developed by Telltale Games. That same month, the production company 3D Entertainment Films announced Lloyd would star as an eccentric professor who with his lab assistant explore the various dimensions in "Time, the Fourth Dimension", an approximately 45-minute Imax 3D film that was planned for release in 2012.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: On January 21, 2011, he appeared in "The Firefly" episode of the J. J. Abrams television series "Fringe" as Roscoe Joyce. That August, he reprised the role of Dr. Emmett Brown (from "Back to the Future") as part of an advertising campaign for Garbarino, an Argentine appliance company, and also as part of Nike's "Back For the Future" campaign for the benefit of The Michael J. Fox Foundation. In 2012 and 2013, Lloyd reprised the role of Doc Brown in two episodes of the stopmotion series "Robot Chicken". He was a guest star on the 100th episode of the USA Network sitcom "Psych" as Martin Khan in 2013.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: In May 2013, Lloyd appeared as the narrator and the character Azdak in the Bertolt Brecht play "The Caucasian Chalk Circle", produced by the Classic Stage Company in New York.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: On the October 21, 2015, episode of "Jimmy Kimmel Live", Lloyd and Michael J. Fox appeared in a "Back to the Future" skit to commemorate the date in the second installment of the film trilogy.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: In May 2018, Lloyd made a cameo appearance in the episode titled "No Country For Old Women" of "Roseanne", where he played the role of Lou, the boyfriend to the mother of Roseanne and Jackie. He is set to reprise the role in an episode of its spin-off, "The Conners", airing May 4, 2022. In late 2019, he provided the voice of Xehanort in the "Re Mind" downloadable content of "Kingdom Hearts III", taking over the role from the late Leonard Nimoy and Rutger Hauer, and reprised the role in the 2020 video game "".


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: In March 2021, Lloyd played the best friend of William Shatner in the romantic comedy movie "Senior Moment", also starring Jean Smart.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: In September 2021, Lloyd portrayed Rick Sanchez in a series of promotional interstitials directed by Paul B. Cummings for the two-part fifth season finale of "Rick and Morty", a character inspired by Lloyd's portrayal of Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown from "Back to the Future", alongside Jaeden Martell as Morty Smith. Addressing his own and original voice actor Justin Roiland's portrayals of Sanchez compared to Doc Brown, Lloyd stated that "he felt like Doc and Rick were like two brothers that took different paths."


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: In March 2022, Lloyd appeared in a promotion for the time travel film "The Adam Project" along with two of its stars, Ryan Reynolds and Mark Ruffalo.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: By July 2020, Lloyd was cast as The Alchemist in "Man & Witch", a family-friendly fantasy-adventure film directed by Rob Margolies, with Jim Henson's Creature Shop set to create the puppets for the film.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: In March 2022, Lloyd was announced to be set to guest star in an episode of the third season of "The Mandalorian", expected to be released later in the year by Disney+.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: In April 2022, it was announced that Lloyd will star in "", a film produced in partnership with the Spirit Halloween retailer. He plays Alec Windsor, a wealthy land developer who disappeared one Halloween night, and whose spirit is said to haunt the town in which the film is set each year on Halloween. The film is slated to be released on video-on-demand (VOD) on October 11, 2022.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: Lloyd married Catharine Dallas Dixon Boyd, on June 6, 1959. They divorced in 1971. He married actress Kay Tornborg in 1974, divorcing her circa 1987. Lloyd's third marriage, to Carol Ann Vanek, had lasted more than two years when they were in the process of divorce in July 1991. His fourth marriage, to screenwriter Jane Walker Wood, lasted from 1992 to 2005.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: In 2016, he married Lisa Loiacono, who was Lloyd's real estate agent when he sold his house in Montecito, California, in 2012. His former house on that lot was destroyed in the Tea Fire of November 2008.


title: Christopher Lloyd

text: Lloyd's philanthropist mother, Ruth Lapham Lloyd, died in 1984 at age 88. Her other surviving children were Donald L. Mygatt, Antoinette L. Mygatt Lucas, Samuel Lloyd III, Ruth Lloyd Scott, Ax Lloyd, and Adele L. Kinney. Lloyd's nephew, Sam Lloyd (1963–2020), was known for playing lawyer Ted Buckland on "Scrubs".


title: Blockchain

text: A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called "blocks", that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree, where data nodes are represented by leaves). The timestamp proves that the transaction data existed when the block was created. Since each block contains information about the previous block, they effectively form a "chain" (compare linked list data structure), with each additional block linking to the ones before it. Consequently, blockchain transactions are irreversible in that, once they are recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without altering all subsequent blocks.


title: Blockchain

text: Blockchains are typically managed by a peer-to-peer (P2P) computer network for use as a public distributed ledger, where nodes collectively adhere to a consensus algorithm protocol to add and validate new transaction blocks. Although blockchain records are not unalterable, since blockchain forks are possible, blockchains may be considered secure by design and exemplify a distributed computing system with high Byzantine fault tolerance.


title: Blockchain

text: A blockchain was created by a person (or group of people) using the name (or pseudonym) Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 to serve as the public distributed ledger for bitcoin cryptocurrency transactions, based on previous work by Stuart Haber, W. Scott Stornetta, and Dave Bayer. The implementation of the blockchain within bitcoin made it the first digital currency to solve the double-spending problem without the need of a trusted authority or central server. The bitcoin design has inspired other applications and blockchains that are readable by the public and are widely used by cryptocurrencies. The blockchain may be considered a type of payment rail.


title: Blockchain

text: Private blockchains have been proposed for business use. "Computerworld" called the marketing of such privatized blockchains without a proper security model "snake oil"; however, others have argued that permissioned blockchains, if carefully designed, may be more decentralized and therefore more secure in practice than permissionless ones.


title: Blockchain

text: Cryptographer David Chaum first proposed a blockchain-like protocol in his 1982 dissertation "Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups." Further work on a cryptographically secured chain of blocks was described in 1991 by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta. They wanted to implement a system wherein document timestamps could not be tampered with. In 1992, Haber, Stornetta, and Dave Bayer incorporated Merkle trees into the design, which improved its efficiency by allowing several document certificates to be collected into one block. Under their company Surety, their document certificate hashes have been published in "The New York Times" every week since 1995.


title: Blockchain

text: The first decentralized blockchain was conceptualized by a person (or group of people) known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Nakamoto improved the design in an important way using a Hashcash-like method to timestamp blocks without requiring them to be signed by a trusted party and introducing a difficulty parameter to stabilize the rate at which blocks are added to the chain. The design was implemented the following year by Nakamoto as a core component of the cryptocurrency bitcoin, where it serves as the public ledger for all transactions on the network.


title: Blockchain

text: In August 2014, the bitcoin blockchain file size, containing records of all transactions that have occurred on the network, reached 20 GB (gigabytes). In January 2015, the size had grown to almost 30 GB, and from January 2016 to January 2017, the bitcoin blockchain grew from 50 GB to 100 GB in size. The ledger size had exceeded 200 GB by early 2020.


title: Blockchain

text: The words "block" and "chain" were used separately in Satoshi Nakamoto's original paper, but were eventually popularized as a single word, "blockchain," by 2016.


title: Blockchain

text: According to Accenture, an application of the diffusion of innovations theory suggests that blockchains attained a 13.5% adoption rate within financial services in 2016, therefore reaching the early adopters' phase. Industry trade groups joined to create the Global Blockchain Forum in 2016, an initiative of the Chamber of Digital Commerce.


title: Blockchain

text: In May 2018, Gartner found that only 1% of CIOs indicated any kind of blockchain adoption within their organisations, and only 8% of CIOs were in the short-term "planning or [looking at] active experimentation with blockchain". For the year 2019 Gartner reported 5% of CIOs believed blockchain technology was a 'game-changer' for their business.


title: Blockchain

text: A blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, and often public, digital ledger consisting of records called "blocks" that are used to record transactions across many computers so that any involved block cannot be altered retroactively, without the alteration of all subsequent blocks. This allows the participants to verify and audit transactions independently and relatively inexpensively. A blockchain database is managed autonomously using a peer-to-peer network and a distributed timestamping server. They are authenticated by mass collaboration powered by collective self-interests. Such a design facilitates robust workflow where participants' uncertainty regarding data security is marginal. The use of a blockchain removes the characteristic of infinite reproducibility from a digital asset. It confirms that each unit of value was transferred only once, solving the long-standing problem of double-spending. A blockchain has been described as a "value-exchange protocol". A blockchain can maintain title rights because, when properly set up to detail the exchange agreement, it provides a record that compels offer and acceptance.


title: Blockchain

text: Blocks hold batches of valid transactions that are hashed and encoded into a Merkle tree. Each block includes the cryptographic hash of the prior block in the blockchain, linking the two. The linked blocks form a chain. This iterative process confirms the integrity of the previous block, all the way back to the initial block, which is known as the "genesis block" (Block 0). To assure the integrity of a block and the data contained in it, the block is usually digitally signed.


title: Blockchain

text: Sometimes separate blocks can be produced concurrently, creating a temporary fork. In addition to a secure hash-based history, any blockchain has a specified algorithm for scoring different versions of the history so that one with a higher score can be selected over others. Blocks not selected for inclusion in the chain are called orphan blocks. Peers supporting the database have different versions of the history from time to time. They keep only the highest-scoring version of the database known to them. Whenever a peer receives a higher-scoring version (usually the old version with a single new block added) they extend or overwrite their own database and retransmit the improvement to their peers. There is never an absolute guarantee that any particular entry will remain in the best version of history forever. Blockchains are typically built to add the score of new blocks onto old blocks and are given incentives to extend with new blocks rather than overwrite old blocks. Therefore, the probability of an entry becoming superseded decreases exponentially as more blocks are built on top of it, eventually becoming very low. For example, bitcoin uses a proof-of-work system, where the chain with the most cumulative proof-of-work is considered the valid one by the network. There are a number of methods that can be used to demonstrate a sufficient level of computation. Within a blockchain the computation is carried out redundantly rather than in the traditional segregated and parallel manner.


title: Blockchain

text: The "block time" is the average time it takes for the network to generate one extra block in the blockchain. By the time of block completion, the included data becomes verifiable. In cryptocurrency, this is practically when the transaction takes place, so a shorter block time means faster transactions. The block time for Ethereum is set to between 14 and 15 seconds, while for bitcoin it is on average 10 minutes.


title: Blockchain

text: By storing data across its peer-to-peer network, the blockchain eliminates a number of risks that come with data being held centrally. The decentralized blockchain may use ad hoc message passing and distributed networking. One risk of a lack of decentralization is a so-called "51% attack" where a central entity can gain control of more than half of a network and can manipulate that specific blockchain record at will, allowing double-spending.


title: Blockchain

text: Peer-to-peer blockchain networks lack centralized points of vulnerability that computer crackers can exploit; likewise, they have no central point of failure. Blockchain security methods include the use of public-key cryptography. A "public key" (a long, random-looking string of numbers) is an address on the blockchain. Value tokens sent across the network are recorded as belonging to that address. A "private key" is like a password that gives its owner access to their digital assets or the means to otherwise interact with the various capabilities that blockchains now support. Data stored on the blockchain is generally considered incorruptible.


title: Blockchain

text: Every node in a decentralized system has a copy of the blockchain. Data quality is maintained by massive database replication and computational trust. No centralized "official" copy exists and no user is "trusted" more than any other. Transactions are broadcast to the network using the software. Messages are delivered on a best-effort basis. Early blockchains rely on energy-intensive mining nodes to validate transactions, add them to the block they are building, and then broadcast the completed block to other nodes. Blockchains use various time-stamping schemes, such as proof-of-work, to serialize changes. Later consensus methods include proof of stake. The growth of a decentralized blockchain is accompanied by the risk of centralization because the computer resources required to process larger amounts of data become more expensive.


title: Blockchain

text: Finality is the level of confidence that the well-formed block recently appended to the blockchain will not be revoked in the future (is "finalized") and thus can be trusted. Most distributed blockchain protocols, whether proof of work or proof of stake, cannot guarantee the finality of a freshly committed block, and instead rely on "probabilistic finality": as the block goes deeper into a blockchain, it is less likely to be altered or reverted by a newly found consensus.


title: Blockchain

text: Byzantine Fault Tolerance-based proof-of-stake protocols purport to provide so called "absolute finality": a randomly chosen validator proposes a block, the rest of validators vote on it, and, if a supermajority decision approves it, the block is irreversibly committed into the blockchain. A modification of this method, an "economic finality", is used in practical protocols, like the Casper protocol used in Ethereum: validators which sign two different blocks at the same position in the blockchain are subject to "slashing", where their leveraged stake is forfeited.


title: Blockchain

text: Open blockchains are more user-friendly than some traditional ownership records, which, while open to the public, still require physical access to view. Because all early blockchains were permissionless, controversy has arisen over the blockchain definition. An issue in this ongoing debate is whether a private system with verifiers tasked and authorized (permissioned) by a central authority should be considered a blockchain. Proponents of permissioned or private chains argue that the term "blockchain" may be applied to any data structure that batches data into time-stamped blocks. These blockchains serve as a distributed version of [[multiversion concurrency control]] (MVCC) in databases. Just as MVCC prevents two transactions from concurrently modifying a single object in a database, blockchains prevent two transactions from spending the same single output in a blockchain. Opponents say that permissioned systems resemble traditional corporate databases, not supporting decentralized data verification, and that such systems are not hardened against operator tampering and revision. Nikolai Hampton of "[[Computerworld]]" said that "many in-house blockchain solutions will be nothing more than cumbersome databases," and "without a clear security model, proprietary blockchains should be eyed with suspicion."


title: Blockchain

text: An advantage to an open, permissionless, or public, blockchain network is that guarding against bad actors is not required and no [[access control]] is needed. This means that applications can be added to the network without the approval or trust of others, using the blockchain as a [[transport layer]].


title: Blockchain

text: Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies currently secure their blockchain by requiring new entries to include proof of work. To prolong the blockchain, bitcoin uses [[Hashcash]] puzzles. While Hashcash was designed in 1997 by [[Adam Back]], the original idea was first proposed by [[Cynthia Dwork]] and [[Moni Naor]] and Eli Ponyatovski in their 1992 paper "Pricing via Processing or Combatting Junk Mail".


title: Blockchain

text: In 2016, [[venture capital]] investment for blockchain-related projects was weakening in the USA but increasing in China. Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies use open (public) blockchains. , bitcoin has the highest [[Cryptocurrency#Price trends|market capitalization]].


title: Blockchain

text: Permissioned blockchains use an access control layer to govern who has access to the network. In contrast to public blockchain networks, validators on private blockchain networks are vetted by the network owner. They do not rely on anonymous nodes to validate transactions nor do they benefit from the [[network effect]]. Permissioned blockchains can also go by the name of 'consortium' blockchains. It has been argued that permissioned blockchains can guarantee a certain level of decentralization, if carefully designed, as opposed to permissionless blockchains, which are often centralized in practice.


title: Blockchain

text: Nikolai Hampton pointed out in "[[Computerworld]]" that "There is also no need for a '51 percent' attack on a private blockchain, as the private blockchain (most likely) already controls 100 percent of all block creation resources. If you could attack or damage the blockchain creation tools on a private corporate server, you could effectively control 100 percent of their network and alter transactions however you wished." This has a set of particularly profound adverse implications during a [[financial crisis]] or [[debt crisis]] like the [[financial crisis of 2007–08]], where politically powerful actors may make decisions that favor some groups at the expense of others, and "the bitcoin blockchain is protected by the massive group mining effort. It's unlikely that any private blockchain will try to protect records using [[gigawatts]] of computing power — it's time-consuming and expensive." He also said, "Within a private blockchain there is also no 'race'; there's no incentive to use more power or discover blocks faster than competitors. This means that many in-house blockchain solutions will be nothing more than cumbersome databases."


title: Blockchain

text: The [[Blockchain analysis|analysis of public blockchains]] has become increasingly important with the popularity of [[bitcoin]], [[Ethereum]], [[litecoin]] and other [[cryptocurrencies]]. A blockchain, if it is public, provides anyone who wants access to observe and analyse the chain data, given one has the know-how. The process of understanding and accessing the flow of crypto has been an issue for many cryptocurrencies, crypto exchanges and banks. The reason for this is accusations of blockchain-enabled cryptocurrencies enabling illicit [[Darknet market|dark market]] trade of drugs, weapons, money laundering, etc. A common belief has been that cryptocurrency is private and untraceable, thus leading many actors to use it for illegal purposes. This is changing and now specialised tech companies provide blockchain tracking services, making crypto exchanges, law-enforcement and banks more aware of what is happening with crypto funds and [[Fiat money|fiat]]-crypto exchanges. The development, some argue, has led criminals to prioritise the use of new cryptos such as [[Monero (cryptocurrency)|Monero]]. The question is about the public accessibility of blockchain data and the personal privacy of the very same data. It is a key debate in cryptocurrency and ultimately in the blockchain.


title: Blockchain

text: In April 2016, [[Standards Australia]] submitted a proposal to the [[International Organization for Standardization]] to consider developing standards to support blockchain technology. This proposal resulted in the creation of ISO Technical Committee 307, Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies. The technical committee has working groups relating to blockchain terminology, reference architecture, security and privacy, identity, smart contracts, governance and interoperability for blockchain and DLT, as well as standards specific to industry sectors and generic government requirements.<ref name="ISO/TC 307 Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies"></ref> More than 50 countries are participating in the standardization process together with external liaisons such as the [[Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication]] (SWIFT), the [[European Commission]], the [[International Federation of Surveyors]], the [[International Telecommunication Union]] (ITU) and the [[United Nations Economic Commission for Europe]] (UNECE).


title: Blockchain

text: Many other national standards bodies and open standards bodies are also working on blockchain standards. These include the [[National Institute of Standards and Technology]] (NIST), the [[European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization]] (CENELEC), the [[Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers]] (IEEE), the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards ([[OASIS (organization)|OASIS]]), and some individual participants in the [[Internet Engineering Task Force]]<ref name="An Interoperability Architecture for Blockchain/DLT Gateways draft-hardjono-blockchain-interop-arch-02"></ref> (IETF).


title: Blockchain

text: Although most of blockchain implementation are decentralized and distributed, [[Oracle Corporation|Oracle]] launched a centralized blockchain table feature in [[Oracle Database|Oracle 21c database]]. The Blockchain Table in [[Oracle Database|Oracle 21c database]] is a centralized blockchain which provide immutable feature. Compared to decentralized blockchains, centralized blockchains normally can provide a higher throughput and lower latency of transactions than consensus-based distributed blockchains.


title: Blockchain

text: Currently, there are at least four types of blockchain networks — public blockchains, private blockchains, [[consortium]] blockchains and hybrid blockchains.


title: Blockchain

text: A public blockchain has absolutely no access restrictions. Anyone with an [[Internet]] connection can send [[Financial transaction|transactions]] to it as well as become a validator (i.e., participate in the execution of a [[Consensus (computer science)|consensus protocol]]). Usually, such networks offer [[Incentive|economic incentives]] for those who secure them and utilize some type of a [[Proof-of-stake|Proof of Stake]] or [[Proof-of-work system|Proof of Work]] algorithm.


title: Blockchain

text: Some of the largest, most known public blockchains are the bitcoin blockchain and the Ethereum blockchain.


title: Blockchain

text: A private blockchain is permissioned. One cannot join it unless invited by the network administrators. Participant and validator access is [[Closed platform|restricted]]. To distinguish between open blockchains and other peer-to-peer decentralized database applications that are not open ad-hoc compute clusters, the terminology [[Distributed Ledger]] (DLT) is normally used for private blockchains.


title: Blockchain

text: A hybrid blockchain has a combination of centralized and decentralized features. The exact workings of the chain can vary based on which portions of centralization and decentralization are used.


title: Blockchain

text: A sidechain is a designation for a blockchain ledger that runs in parallel to a primary blockchain. Entries from the primary blockchain (where said entries typically represent [[digital asset]]s) can be linked to and from the sidechain; this allows the sidechain to otherwise operate independently of the primary blockchain (e.g., by using an alternate means of record keeping, alternate [[Consensus (computer science)|consensus algorithm]], etc.).


title: Blockchain

text: Blockchain technology can be integrated into multiple areas. The primary use of blockchains is as a [[distributed ledger]] for [[cryptocurrency|cryptocurrencies]] such as [[bitcoin]]; there were also a few other operational products that had matured from [[proof of concept]] by late 2016. As of 2016, some businesses have been testing the technology and conducting low-level implementation to gauge blockchain's effects on organizational efficiency in their [[back office]].


title: Blockchain

text: In 2019, it was estimated that around $2.9 billion were invested in blockchain technology, which represents an 89% increase from the year prior. Additionally, the International Data Corp has estimated that corporate investment into blockchain technology will reach $12.4 billion by 2022. Furthermore, According to [[PricewaterhouseCoopers]] (PwC), the second-largest professional services network in the world, blockchain technology has the potential to generate an annual business value of more than $3 trillion by 2030. PwC's estimate is further augmented by a 2018 study that they have conducted, in which PwC surveyed 600 business executives and determined that 84% have at least some exposure to utilizing blockchain technology, which indicates a significant demand and interest in blockchain technology.


title: Blockchain

text: In 2019 the [[BBC World Service]] radio and podcast series "[[50 Things That Made the Modern Economy|Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy]]" identified blockchain as a technology that would have far-reaching consequences for economics and society. The economist and "Financial Times" journalist and broadcaster [[Tim Harford]] discussed why the underlying technology might have much wider applications and the challenges that needed to be overcome. First broadcast 29 June 2019.


title: Blockchain

text: A paper published in 2022 discussed the potential use of blockchain technology in sustainable management


title: Blockchain

text: Most cryptocurrencies use blockchain technology to record transactions. For example, the [[bitcoin network]] and [[Ethereum]] network are both based on blockchain.


title: Blockchain

text: The criminal enterprise [[Silk Road (marketplace)|Silk Road]], which operated on [[Tor (anonymity network)|Tor]], utilized cryptocurrency for payments, some of which the [[US federal government]] has seized through research on the blockchain and [[Forfeiture (law)|forfeiture.]]


title: Blockchain

text: [[Legality of bitcoin by country or territory|Governments have mixed policies]] on the legality of their citizens or banks owning cryptocurrencies. China implements blockchain technology in several industries including a [[Central bank digital currency|national digital currency]] which launched in 2020. To strengthen their respective currencies, Western governments including the European Union and the United States have initiated similar projects.


title: Blockchain

text: Blockchain-based [[smart contract]]s are proposed contracts that can be partially or fully executed or enforced without human interaction. One of the main objectives of a smart contract is [[automation|automated]] [[escrow]]. A key feature of smart contracts is that they do not need a trusted third party (such as a trustee) to act as an intermediary between contracting entities — the blockchain network executes the contract on its own. This may reduce friction between entities when transferring value and could subsequently open the door to a higher level of transaction automation. An [[International Monetary Fund|IMF]] staff discussion from 2018 reported that smart contracts based on blockchain technology might reduce [[moral hazard]]s and optimize the use of contracts in general. But "no viable smart contract systems have yet emerged." Due to the lack of widespread use their legal status was unclear.


title: Blockchain

text: According to "[[Reason (magazine)|Reason]]", many banks have expressed interest in implementing [[distributed ledger]]s for use in [[banking]] and are cooperating with companies creating private blockchains, and according to a September 2016 [[IBM]] study, this is occurring faster than expected.


title: Blockchain

text: Banks are interested in this technology not least because it has the potential to speed up [[back office]] settlement systems. Moreover, as the blockchain industry has reached early maturity institutional appreciation has grown that it is, practically speaking, the infrastructure of a whole new financial industry, with all the implications which that entails.


title: Blockchain

text: [[Bank]]s such as [[UBS]] are opening new research labs dedicated to blockchain technology in order to explore how blockchain can be used in financial services to increase efficiency and reduce costs.


title: Blockchain

text: [[Berenberg Bank|Berenberg]], a German bank, believes that blockchain is an "overhyped technology" that has had a large number of "proofs of concept", but still has major challenges, and very few success stories.


title: Blockchain

text: The blockchain has also given rise to [[initial coin offering]]s (ICOs) as well as a new category of digital asset called security token offerings (STOs), also sometimes referred to as digital security offerings (DSOs). STO/DSOs may be conducted privately or on public, regulated stock exchange and are used to tokenize traditional assets such as company shares as well as more innovative ones like intellectual property, real estate, art, or individual products. A number of companies are active in this space providing services for compliant [[Tokenization (data security)|tokenization]], private STOs, and public STOs.


title: Blockchain

text: Blockchain technology, such as cryptocurrencies and [[non-fungible token]]s (NFTs), has been used in video games for [[video game monetization|monetization]]. Many [[Games as a service|live-service games]] offer in-game customization options, such as character skins or other in-game items, which the players can earn and trade with other players using in-game currency. Some games also allow for trading of virtual items using real-world currency, but this may be illegal in some countries where video games are seen as akin to gambling, and has led to [[gray market]] issues such as [[skin gambling]], and thus publishers typically have shied away from allowing players to earn real-world funds from games. Blockchain games typically allow players to trade these in-game items for cryptocurrency, which can then be exchanged for money.


title: Blockchain

text: The first known game to use blockchain technologies was "[[CryptoKitties]]", launched in November 2017, where the player would purchase NFTs with Ethereum cryptocurrency, each NFT consisting of a [[virtual pet]] that the player could breed with others to create offspring with combined traits as new NFTs. The game made headlines in December 2017 when one virtual pet sold for more than [[United States dollar|US$]]100,000. "CryptoKitties" also illustrated scalability problems for games on Ethereum when it created significant congestion on the Ethereum network in early 2018 with approximately 30% of all Ethereum transactions being for the game.


title: Blockchain

text: By the early 2020s, there had not been a breakout success in video games using blockchain, as these games tend to focus on using blockchain for speculation instead of more traditional forms of gameplay, which offers limited appeal to most players. Such games also represent a high risk to investors as their revenues can be difficult to predict. However, limited successes of some games, such as "[[Axie Infinity]]" during the [[COVID-19 pandemic]], and corporate plans towards [[metaverse]] content, refueled interest in the area of GameFi, a term describing the intersection of video games and financing typically backed by blockchain currency, in the second half of 2021. Several major publishers, including [[Ubisoft]], [[Electronic Arts]], and [[Take Two Interactive]], have stated that blockchain and NFT-based games are under serious consideration for their companies in the future.


title: Blockchain

text: In October 2021, [[Valve Corporation]] banned blockchain games, including those using cryptocurrency and [[Non-fungible token|NFTs]], from being hosted on its [[Steam (service)|Steam]] digital storefront service, which is widely used for personal computer gaming, claiming that this was an extension of their policy banning games that offered in-game items with real-world value. Valve's prior history with [[gambling]], specifically [[skin gambling]], was speculated to be a factor in the decision to ban blockchain games. Journalists and players responded positively to Valve's decision as blockchain and NFT games have a reputation for scams and fraud among most PC gamers, [[Epic Games]], which runs the [[Epic Games Store]] in competition to Steam, said that they would be open to accepted blockchain games, in the wake of Valve's refusal.


title: Blockchain

text: There are several different efforts to offer [[domain name]] services via the blockchain. These domain names can be controlled by the use of a private key, which purports to allow for uncensorable websites. This would also bypass a registrar's ability to suppress domains used for fraud, abuse, or illegal content.


title: Blockchain

text: [[Namecoin]] is a cryptocurrency that supports the ".bit" [[top-level domain]] (TLD). Namecoin was forked from bitcoin in 2011. The .bit TLD is not sanctioned by [[ICANN]], instead requiring an [[alternative DNS root]]. As of 2015, it was used by 28 websites, out of 120,000 registered names. Namecoin was dropped by [[OpenNIC]] in 2019, due to malware and potential other legal issues. Other blockchain alternatives to ICANN include The Handshake Network, EmerDNS, and Unstoppable Domains.


title: Blockchain

text: Specific TLDs include ".eth", ".luxe", and ".kred", which are associated with the Ethereum blockchain through the Ethereum Name Service (ENS). The .kred TLD also acts as an alternative to conventional [[cryptocurrency wallet]] addresses, as a convenience for transferring cryptocurrency.


title: Blockchain

text: Blockchain technology can be used to create a permanent, public, transparent ledger system for compiling data on sales, tracking digital use and payments to content creators, such as wireless users or musicians. The Gartner 2019 CIO Survey reported 2% of higher education respondents had launched blockchain projects and another 18% were planning academic projects in the next 24 months. In 2017, [[IBM]] partnered with [[ASCAP]] and [[PRS for Music]] to adopt blockchain technology in music distribution. [[Imogen Heap]]'s Mycelia service has also been proposed as a blockchain-based alternative "that gives artists more control over how their songs and associated data circulate among fans and other musicians."


title: Blockchain

text: New distribution methods are available for the [[insurance]] industry such as [[peer-to-peer insurance]], [[parametric insurance]] and [[microinsurance]] following the adoption of blockchain. The [[sharing economy]] and [[Internet of Things|IoT]] are also set to benefit from blockchains because they involve many collaborating peers. The use of blockchain in libraries is being studied with a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.


title: Blockchain

text: Other blockchain designs include [[Hyperledger]], a collaborative effort from the [[Linux Foundation]] to support blockchain-based distributed ledgers, with projects under this initiative including Hyperledger Burrow (by Monax) and Hyperledger Fabric (spearheaded by IBM). Another is Quorum, a permissionable private blockchain by [[JPMorgan Chase]] with private storage, used for contract applications.


title: Blockchain

text: [[Oracle Corporation|Oracle]] introduced a blockchain table feature in its [[Oracle database|Oracle 21c database]].


title: Blockchain

text: Blockchain could be used in detecting counterfeits by associating unique identifiers to products, documents and shipments, and storing records associated with transactions that cannot be forged or altered. It is however argued that blockchain technology needs to be supplemented with technologies that provide a strong binding between physical objects and blockchain systems. The [[European Union Intellectual Property Office|EUIPO]] established an Anti-Counterfeiting Blockathon Forum, with the objective of "defining, piloting and implementing" an anti-counterfeiting infrastructure at the European level. The Dutch Standardisation organisation NEN uses blockchain together with [[QR code|QR Codes]] to authenticate certificates.


title: Blockchain

text: 2022 Jan 30 Beijing and Shanghai are among the cities designated by China to trial blockchain applications.


title: Blockchain

text: With the increasing number of blockchain systems appearing, even only those that support cryptocurrencies, blockchain interoperability is becoming a topic of major importance. The objective is to support transferring assets from one blockchain system to another blockchain system. Wegner stated that "[[interoperability]] is the ability of two or more software components to cooperate despite differences in language, interface, and execution platform". The objective of blockchain interoperability is therefore to support such cooperation among blockchain systems, despite those kinds of differences.


title: Blockchain

text: There are already several blockchain interoperability solutions available. They can be classified into three categories: cryptocurrency interoperability approaches, blockchain engines, and blockchain connectors.


title: Blockchain

text: Several individual IETF participants produced the draft of a blockchain interoperability architecture.


title: Blockchain

text: Some cryptocurrencies use blockchain mining — the peer-to-peer computer computations by which transactions are validated and verified. This requires a large amount of energy. In June 2018 the [[Bank for International Settlements]] criticized the use of public [[proof-of-work]] blockchains for their high energy consumption.