The 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion (aka Playa Girón), was an unsuccessful attempte invasion by armed Cuban exiles in southwest Cuba, planned and funded by the United States, in an attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro, shortly after John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency in the U.S. This action accelerated a rapid deterioration in Cuban-American relations, which was further worsened by the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year.