Cuba’s Fidel Castro, who defied US for 50 years, dies at 90

By September, Castro was strong enough to give two outdoor speeches under Havana’s blazing sun: the first on the steps of Havana University, and the second in front of the capital’s former presidential palace.

When he closed the twice-a-decade congress of the Cuban Communist Party in April he called on his countrymen to maintain socialist ideals in the face of closer ties with the US.

But Castro also loved burning the midnight oil, the written word, and, ironically, the sport that unites Cuba and its U.S. foe: baseball. After he embraced Communism, Washington portrayed him as a devil and a tyrant and repeatedly tried to remove him from power through an ill-fated invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, an economic embargo that has lasted decades, assassination plots and even freakish plans to undercut his prestige by making his beard fall out. Thousands left behind their possessions, loved ones, and hard-earned educations and businesses, traveling to the U.S.by plane, boat or raft. Also reportedly had several other children out of wedlock. Castro fled to Mexico and organized a rebel band of 81 followers that returned in 1956, sailing across the Gulf of Mexico to Cuba on a yacht named Granma.

A Central Intelligence Agency backed counter revolution in 1961, the infamous Bay of Pigs episode, ended in disaster for the Americans. This was followed by the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Diplomatic relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union resume.

The showdown between Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and President John Kennedy was the moment of Castro’s greatest relevance on the world stage.

The United States has variously been infuriated, embarrassed and alarmed at Castro’s defiance, and intensely frustrated by his survival in power despite the economic embargo Washington hoped in vain would spark rebellion. “Cuba will be a different place because he lived and he died”, Pastor said.

But the collapse of the Soviet bloc ended billions in preferential trade and subsidies for Cuba, sending its economy into a tailspin. ─ AP This file photo taken in the 1960s shows then Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro (L) lighting a cigar while listens Argentine Ernesto Che Guevara.

March 18 2003 – 75 Cuban dissidents sentenced to prison.

Instead, nearly killed by a serious intestinal illness, he was forced to step aside in 2006 and he formally handed over to his younger brother, Raul Castro, in 2008. Castro, in February 2008, announcing his resignation as president. Even though he did not resign, he transferred much of his power to Raúl, his younger brother.

But she wasn’t seen publicly alongside Castro until the summer of 2010, when he made a series of appearances after a four-year absence, including his first address to the National Assembly since falling ill. “The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain”.

In October 1962, Castro agreed to house Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuban territory, a move that followed the deployment of U.S. missiles in Turkey.