North Korea has fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, which flew for 86 minutes - the longest flight recorded yet - before falling into waters off its east, South Korea and Japan said.
The ICBM was fired at a sharply-raised angle and reached as high as 7,000km (4,350 miles). This means that it would have covered a further distance if it were launched horizontally.
Thursday’s launch violated UN curbs and came at a time of deteriorating relations between the two Koreas and Pyongyang’s increasingly aggresive rhetoric towards Seoul.
South Korea had also warned on Wednesday that the North was preparing to fire its ICBM close to the US presidential election on 5 November.
How old are you? The Cuban missile crisis was far worse than this - but 1962 was 62 years ago - not many people alive are old enough to remember how bad it was then. For most of us that is just something for history while the things happening today are real to us.
Odds are this will pass, but just like in 1962 nobody knew for sure we were not on the brink of war, I cannot tell you for sure.
I know I wasn’t there but based on what I’ve read of that that felt like it was between only US and Russia. And the risk was nuclear war between them. Now we have several nuclear powers at each others throats.
The only countries that had nuclear weapons in 1962 were the US and USSR, so yes, the nuclear conflict would have “only” been between those two countries.