• ... that Brooklyn Nine-Nine actress Melissa Fumero is the daughter of Cubans who fled to the U.S. as teenagers?
• ... that Joan Boada was named a principal dancer at the Cuban National Ballet at age 16, but later defected and ended up at the San Francisco Ballet?
• ... that before his Major League Baseball career, Leo Posada represented Cuba internationally in cycling?
• ... that after his movement's victory in the Cuban Revolution, television broadcasts showed Camilo Cienfuegos freeing parrots from birdcages, declaring that the birds had "a right to liberty"?
• ... that after his release from a hospital for the criminally insane, Richard Dixon burgled $16 from a credit union and hijacked a jet to Cuba?
• ... that José Ramón Balaguer fought as a soldier-medic for Fidel Castro's rebel army before becoming Cuba's minister of public health?

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Anarchism as a social movement in Cuba held great influence with the working classes during the 19th and early 20th century. The movement was particularly strong following the abolition of slavery in 1886, until it was repressed first in 1925 by President Gerardo Machado, and more thoroughly by Fidel Castro's Marxist–Leninist government following the Cuban Revolution in the late 1950s. Cuban anarchism mainly took the form of anarcho-collectivism based on the works of Mikhail Bakunin and, later, anarcho-syndicalism. The Latin American labor movement, and by extension the Cuban labor movement, was at first more influenced by anarchism than Marxism. (Full article...)

Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar^{[lower-alpha 1]} (born Rubén Zaldívar; January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and as a military dictator from 1952 to 1958, until he was overthrown in the Cuban Revolution.

Batista initially rose to power as part of the 1933 Revolt of the Sergeants, which overthrew the provisional government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada. Batista then appointed himself chief of the armed forces, with the rank of colonel, and effectively controlled the five-member "pentarchy" that functioned as the collective head of state. He maintained control through a series of puppet presidents until 1940, when he was elected president on a populist platform. He then instated the 1940 Constitution of Cuba and served until 1944. After finishing his term, Batista moved to Florida, returning to Cuba to run for president in 1952. Facing certain electoral defeat, he led a military coup against President Carlos Prío Socarrás that pre-empted the election. (Full article...)

• ...that in 2005, Hurricane Dennis (pictured) left 16 people dead in Cuba and cost $1.4 billion in damages?

• ...that the Tres is a 3-course, 6-string chordophone, rather like a guitar, that is unique to Cuban music?

• ...that in 1900, the Cuban baseball league began admitting black players, thus some of the best players from the Northern American Negro Leagues relocated to Cuba to play in the integrated teams?

• ...that Henry Reeve, a Brigadier General in the Cuban rebel army during the Ten Years' War (1868-1878), was born in Brooklyn, New York?

• ...that the Council of State of Cuba is a 31 member body elected by the National Assembly of People’s Power, that has the authority to exercise most legislative power between the biannual sessions of the National Assembly?

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