13 August 1926: Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is born in Birán.

14 January 1934: Fulgencio Batista, head of the Army General Staff, overthrows president.

4 September 1945: Fidel Castro enters the University of Havana, enrolling in the faculties of law and social science.

July-September 1947: Fidel Castro takes part in preparations for the frustrated Cayo Confites expedition to topple the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.

31 March 1948: As part of a trip through several Latin American countries leading up to a large student conference, Fidel Castro arrives in Bogota, capital of Colombia.

9 April 1948: Colombian populist leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan is assassinated in Bogota, triggering a popular uprising known as the ‘Bogotazo’. Fidel Castro takes part in these demonstrations.

June 1950: Fidel Castro graduates from law school with a degree in law and a admitted to the bar.

26 July 1953: Fidel Castro, leading a group of 165 young people, attacks the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba. This action, which Castro hopes will trigger a popular insurrection against the Batista dictatorship, is thwarted by a series of chance incidents.

1 August 1953: Fidel Castro, who has retreated into the mountains after the failure of the assault on the Moncada barracks is taken prisoner.

16 October 1953: Trial of Fidel Castro, who undertakes his own defence with a famous speech titled ‘History Will Absolve Me’. Castro is sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

15 May 1955: Along with his brother Raul and others who took part in the assault on the Moncada barracks, Fidel Castro is released from the jail on the Isle of Pines in the face of overwhelming popular pressure.

12 June 1955: Official founding of the 26^th of July Movement with the creation of its first national directorate, headed by Fidel Castro.

7 July 1955: Given the impossibility of continuing the fight against Batista by legal means, Fidel Castro goes into exile in Mexico, where he intends to organize an armed popular insurrection.

July 1955: In Mexico, Fidel Castro and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara meet for the first time.

25 November 1956: Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, Che Guevara, and seventy-nine others sail from the Mexican port of Tuxpan for Cuba on the Granma. Their intention in to begin an armed struggle from the mountains of the Sierra Maestra.

2 December 1956: Granma reaches the eastern coast of Cuba, in the area of Los Cayeilos, near the city of Manzanillo, in Oriente province. The Revolution begins.

5 December 1956: In Alegria de Pio, the expeditionary force from the Granma is surprised by the Batista army and completely dispersed.

18 December 1956: Fidel Castro, Raul Castro and six other survivors meet in Cinco Palmas. Two days later, they are joined by Juan Almeida, Che Guevara, Ramiro Valdes and four others.

17 January 1957: The revolutionary forces, which have been joined by other survivors of the Granma expedition and a number of campesinos, achieve their first victory.

16-17 February 1958:  Rebel troops win a significant victory in the second battle of Pino del Agua.

25 May 1958: Batista’s army launches a heavy offensive against the Rebel Army, but is defeated in seventy-four days of intense combat.

15 November 1958: Fidel Castro leaves the Sierra Maestra en route to Santiago de Cuba, from where he will lead the Rebel Army’s final offensive.

1 January 1959: In the face of the military defeat of his forces, dictator Fulgencio Batista flees Cuba and the rebels take power.

8 January 1959: Fidel Castro enters Havana in victory. The Revolutionary government is officially installed.

16 February 1959: Fidel Castro becomes prime minister of the Revolutionary government.

17 May 1959: In fulfillment of the Moncada Programme, the Agrarian Reform Act goes into effect in Cuba.

6 July 1960: President Dwight D Eisenhower signs into law a bill suspending US purchase of Cuban sugar. This is the first important action in the US’ economic war against Cuba.

6 August 1960: Fidel Castro announces the nationalisation of American-owned oil refineries, sugar refineries, and electricity and telephone companies.

9 September 1960: At least eight conspiracies to assassinate Fidel Castro in the Hotel Teresa are uncovered.

26 September 1960: Speech by Fidel Castro before the United Nations general Assembly in New York City. According to the Guinness Book of world Records, this is the longest speech ever given by the leader of a country at the UN: four hours twenty-nine minutes. Castro has meetings with Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, black leader Malcolm X and soviet prime minister Nikita Khrushchev.

13 October 1960: Cuba’s principal banks and some 105 sugar companies are nationalised.

3 January 1961: the United States breaks off diplomatic relations with Cuba and closes its embassy in Havana.

16 April 1961: Fidel Castro declares that the Revolution is a Socialist one: ‘This is a Socialist and democratic Revolution of the humble, by the humble, and for humble.’

17 April 1961: Some 1,500 Cuban counter-revolutionaries organized, trained and equipped by the CIA land on Playa Giron and Playa Larga, in the Bay of Pigs. They are defeated in less than seventy-two hours. American ships, aboard which is a heavy contingent of troops, remain in waters near the Bay of Pigs for three days, ready to intervene.

3 February 1962: President Kennedy orders a complete economic and trade embargo of Cuba. This embargo is still in effect today in an attempt to strangle Cuba economically and foment popular discontent.

22 October 1962: The beginning of the ‘Cuban missile crisis’ as President Kennedy orders a naval blockade of Cuba.

October 1963: At the request of Algerian president Ahmed Ben Bella, Castro sends Cuban soldiers to Algeria to help the Algerian armed forces repel an attack by Morocco. This is Cuba’s first internationalist military operation in Africa.

3 October 1965: The Cuban Communist Party (PCC) is created, Fidel Castro is elected first secretary.

18 October 1967: Fidel Castro announces the death of Che Guevara.

10 November-4 December 1971:  Fidel Castro visits Chile, then under the Popular Unity administration of Salvador Allende.

July 1972: Cuba joins the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), the socialist nations’ ‘common market’.

5-10 September 1973: Fidel Castro takes part in the fourth Summit of Non-Aligned Nations in Algiers.

11 November 1975: Operation Carlota begins: Cuba establishes an airlift and sends thousands of volunteer soldiers to Angloa. This volunteers force halts the advance of South African and Zairian troops.

15 February 1976: The first socialist constitution of Cuba is approved by referendum; the vote is overwhelmingly in favour.

3-9 September 1979: Sixth Summit of Non-Aligned Nations Movement in Havana. Fidel Castro becomes president of the movement.

26 July 1988: Fidel Castro rejects Gorbachev’s perestroika, which Castro calls ‘dangerous’ and ‘opposed to the principles of Socialism’.

26 July 1989: In a speech, Fidel Castro announces that even if the Soviet Union should disappear one day, the Cuban Revolution will go on.

29 August 1990: Cuban authorities declare a ‘special period in times of peace’ and announce fourteen measures restricting consumption of petrol and electricity.

25 May 1991: The last Cuban troops withdrawn from Angola after the peace accords. The war in Angola has cost some 2,000 Cuban lives, and almost 10,000 troops have been wounded. Without Cuba’s military intervention, the Luanda regime would have fallen to South African troops. The defeat of South Africa allows Namibia to be fully independent and precipitates the fall of South Africa’s racist apartheid regime.

May 1994: Fidel Castro attends the inauguration of President Nelson Mandela.

30 October 2000: Fraternal agreement of cooperation signed by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.

18 June 2003: Over 1 million Cubans sign a petition to amend the constitution and declare Socialism irrevocable.

1 January 2004: On the forty-fifth anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution, Cuba declares ‘battle of ideas’ to raise the level of overall culture of the Cuban people, in ongoing struggles to eliminate the US economic embargo and in a campaign to free Cuban Five.

26 July 2006: Fidel Castro suffers a ‘severe intestinal crisis’ and a sever haemorrhage. He undergoes emergency surgery on 27 July.

31 July 2006: Fidel Castro turns over his responsibilities, ‘on a provisional basis’, to a team of seven men headed by Raul Castro.

26 June 2007: The CIA release some 700 pages of documents detailing semi-legal and illegal CIA operations through the 1970s and 1980s and government-Mafia plans to assassinate Fidel Castro.

24 February 2008: Raul Castro is officially elected as the President of Cuba after Fidel Castro writes a letter saying that he would not “aspire to or accept...the positions of President of Council of State and Commander in Chief”.

15 November 2016: Tran Dai Quang, President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is the last foreign dignitary to meet Fidel Castro.

25 November 2016: Fidel Castro breathes his last at 10.29 PM.