From Ravi:
During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 when the US and the Soviet Union were at their most precarious, there was an incident where a Soviet Submarine armed with Nuclear torpedoes was engaged by US naval forces. The captain of the submarine and others mistakenly believed that a war had begun and thus ordered the launch of nuclear weapons. This certainly would have started a full scale nuclear war. However, Vasili Arckhipov who was second in command, successfully blocked the order after an argument with the captain and the other officer authorized to carry out a launch. This event was not known to the public until 2002.
