August 30 – Hotline Established Between U.S. and Soviet Union (1963)
On August 30, 1963, the United States and the Soviet Union established a hotline between Washington D.C. and the Kremlin. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, gained nearly instant access to each other via this new encrypted communication link in order to reduce the risk of a nuclear war.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis of late 1962, the United States and Soviet Union governments actually worked together to come up with a communication system in order to reach each other nearly instantaneously. In those days, communication traveled very slowly via coded, telegrammed, and circuitous routes. The goal of the new hotline, as it was called, was to avert an accidental nuclear holocaust or other type of war. As such, the hotline was reserved exclusively for emergencies.
On this day, August 30, 1963, President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, became the first two chief executives to gain nearly instant communication with each other 24 hours per day, seven days a week.
In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson became the first president to actually use the hotline. In particular, he notified then-Soviet Premier, Alexei Kosygin, during the Six Day War in the Middle East that he might call a U.S. Air Force strike in the Mediterranean near the war.
Today, with instant global communication via multiple types of systems including email, GPS, satellite phones, etc. the hotline seems almost humorous to think about. However, the hotline was state-of-the-art technology in its day and helped to avert the potential for a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.