“Cuba is a small planet travelling in its own orbit.”
—Foreign Minister Raúl RoaThe fifteenth United Nations General Assembly was an exciting one. It met during the cold aftermath of the U-2 affair. It attracted the largest group of world leaders, including Castro, Tito, Nasser, Nehru, Sukarno, Nkrumah, Touré, and Khrushchev, ever to assemble at the UN site. It accelerated the “Africanization” of the UN by admitting during its first part 17 members, 16 from Africa. It was rocked, politically, militarily, and financially, by the Congo crisis, which led to the demand for the ouster of Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and then to his death. It debated Cuban charges against the United States and the embarrassing Bay of Pigs invasion. In a lighter vein, it produced the first public banging of shoes on a UN table by a head of government.