Herblock uses Pandora’s Box as a metaphor for the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, in which Nikita Khrushchev, Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, confronted United States President John F. Kennedy. Both leaders worked to prevent the use of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba aimed at the United States. The Soviet Union ended the crisis on October 28, 1962, although negotiations over withdrawal of weapons from Cuba and Turkey continued.