[CubaNews] REUTERS: Facts about Cuba's Fidel Castro

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Facts about Cuba's Fidel Castro
Wed Aug 13, 2008 12:00pm EDT

Aug 13 Reuters) - The following are some facts about former Cuban leader
Fidel Castro, who turned 82 on Wednesday.

* Fidel Castro led Cuba for 49 years and was the world's third
longest-serving head of state, after Britain's Queen Elizabeth and the King
of Thailand. He has not been seen in public since illness forced him to hand
over day-to-day control to his brother Raul Castro in July 2006. The
transfer of power was formalized in February, when the National Assembly
elected Raul Castro as president.

* Castro holds the Guinness Book of Records title for the longest speech
ever delivered to the United Nations: 4 hours and 29 minutes, on September
29, 1960. His longest speech on record in Cuba was 7 hours and 10 minutes in
1986 at the III Communist Party Congress in Havana.

* Castro claims he survived 634 attempts on his life, mainly masterminded by
the Central Intelligence Agency. They allegedly included poison pills, a
toxic cigar, exploding mollusks, and a chemically-tainted diving suit as
well as powder to make his beard fall out so as to undermine his popularity.

* Despite the CIA plots, a U.S.-backed exile invasion at the Bay of Pigs and
four and a half decades of economic sanctions, Castro outlasted nine U.S.
presidents, from Eisenhower to Clinton, and faced increased hostility under
President George W. Bush, who tightened enforcement of financial sanctions
and a travel ban.

* Castro, once a cigar-chomping guerrilla fighter, gave up cigars in 1985.
Years later he summed up the harm of smoking tobacco by saying: "The best
thing you can do with this box of cigars is to give them to your enemy."

* Castro has at least eight children. His eldest son Fidel Castro
Diaz-Balart, who is the image of his father and is known as Fidelito, is a
Soviet-trained nuclear scientist. Daughter Alina Fernandez, the result of an
affair with a Havana socialite when Castro was underground in the 1950s,
escaped from Cuba disguised as a tourist in 1993 and is a vocal critic of
her father's rule. Castro has five sons with his second wife Dalia Soto.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle and Jeff Franks; Editing by Kieran Murray)

=========================================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Los Angeles, California
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
"Cuba - Un Paraíso bajo el bloqueo"
========================================= 



------------------------------------

To view the current thirty CubaNews messages:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/messages

If this message was forwarded to you, subscription details may be found here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/

To unsubscribe from this CubaNews group, send an email to:
CubaNews-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    mailto:CubaNews-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
    mailto:CubaNews-fullfeatured@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    CubaNews-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/