X-Nico

39 unusual facts about Cuba


1887 Atlantic hurricane season

Although the hurricane passed far to the south of Cuba, it caused several vessels to sink at Batabanó and brought heavy rain and flooding to the islands interior.

1906 Atlantic hurricane season

This first hurricane of the season's effects were first noted in Santa Clara, Cuba, where rainy and windy conditions were observed on the afternoon of June

Alba de Céspedes y Bertini

One of the events, attended by Fidel Castro, was held at in Manzanillo, Cuba, where her grandfather, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, on October 10, 1868, had made a speech against Spain which started the Ten Years' War.

Alfredo Rostgaard

Born in Guantanamo in 1943 Rostgaard studied at the Jose Joaquin Tejada school of art in Santiago de Cuba.

Antonio Núñez Jiménez

Antonio Núñez Jiménez (April 20, 1923 – September 13, 1998) was a Cuban revolutionary and academic.

Basilica Menor de San Francisco de Asis

The basilica and the monastery of San Francisco de Asis (Saint Francis of Assisi) were built in Havana, Cuba at the end of sixteenth century (1580–91) as the home of the Franciscan community, and were altered in the baroque style in 1730.

Carlos Mendieta

Carlos Mendieta y Montefur (November 4, 1873 – 27 September 1960) was a Cuban politician and Provisional President of Cuba.

Cuba Township, Becker County, Minnesota

It was named for Cuba, New York, the former hometown of the early settler Charles W. Smith.

Cuba-Rushford High School

Cuba-Rushford High School is a public high school located in Cuba, Allegany County, New York, U.S.A., and is the only high school operated by the Cuba-Rushford Central School District.

Cuba, an African Odyssey

From Che Guevara's tragicomic epic in the Congo up to the triumph of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola, this film tells the story of the internationalists whose saga is at the basis of today's word: they won all the battles, but end up losing the war.

African revolutionaries like Patrice Lumumba, Amílcar Cabral and Agostinho Neto call on Cuban guerrillas to help them in their struggle.

CUBA: Defending Socialism, Resisting Imperialism

The two film makers visited Cuba by joining a solidarity brigade organised by Rock Around the Blockade.

CUBA: Defending Socialism, Resisting Imperialism is a documentary film produced by Rock Around the Blockade in 2010.

Cuba: My Revolution

Cuba: My Revolution is an autobiographical graphic novel written by Inverna Lockpez with art by Dean Haspiel and colours by Jose Villarubia.

Danny Miranda

Danny Miranda Agramonte (born November 12, 1978 in Morón, Cuba) is a first baseman for Ciego de Ávila of the Cuban National Series.

Felipe Pazos

He worked there for three years before returning to Cuba in 1950 to head the newly established National Bank of Cuba for two years at the behest of Cuban President Carlos Prío Socarrás.

Batista's rule came under increasing assault during the 1950s, and he and the Cuban military soon found themselves fighting against a young Castro and the forces of his 26th of July Movement.

Félix Pita Rodríguez

Félix Pita Rodriguez (1909-1990) was a Cuban journalist, poet and literary critic.

Florida State Road 989

By the late 1960s, the State Road was realigned to Moody Drive to provide increased access to the base's two northern entrance gates as the increasing intensity of the Cold War and the rise to power of Fidel Castro in nearby Cuba amplified the importance of Homestead Air Force Base to the national security of the United States.

Foreign policy of Evo Morales

December 30, 2005: Evo Morales visits Cuba after celebrating his democratic victory in his base town of Orinoca.

Guáimaro Constitution

The Guáimaro Constitution was an agreement between groups in Spanish colonial Cuba supporting independence from Spain, in effect from 1869 to 1878.

Hermann Blau

The Augsburg-based company operated later on with Riedinger under the name the German Blau gas company which controlled factories in Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, Saint Petersburg, the United States, Canada and Cuba.

Isla de Cuba

Isla de Cuba, a Spanish second-class protected cruiser in service from 1887 to 1898 that fought in the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War.

Joseph Vandor

Joseph Vandor SDB, (born as: József Wech, known too as Vándor József, José Vandor, Wech József, Father Puchner) was a Hungarian Catholic Salesian priest, missionary and Venerable * 29 October 1909, Dorog (Komárom-Esztergom County, Austria-Hungary; today: Hungary) † 8 October 1979, Santa Clara (Cuba, America).

Julio Garceran de Vall

Julio Garceran de Vall (1907–1989) is a former Supreme Court Justice of Cuba.

Latino children's literature

Whether born in Puerto Rico or the United States, or emigrated from such countries as Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, or Cuba, the term includes their significant contributions to the field of writing for children in the United States.

Manuello Paganelli

In the late 1980s he was one of the few US photographers to visit Cuba.

Nito Alves

While Cuban soldiers actively helped Neto put down the coup, Alves claimed that the Soviet Union supported the coup.

Nitza Villapol

Nitza Villapol (1923–1998) was a chef, cookbook writer, and television host in Cuba.

Plácido Acevedo

He founded the Mayarí Quartet in the 1930s, in honor of a town in Cuba.

Raúl Chibás

Raúl Chibás Rivas (April 25, 1916 – August 25, 2002) was a Cuban politician and military officer who initially supported Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution but later defected to the United States.

He was a Major of the Cuban Army in 1960 when he decided to defect to the United States via a motor boat to Miami.

Río Cauto

Río Cauto, Cuba, a municipality and City in Granma Province, Cuba

Santiago Armada

Santiago Rafael Armada Suárez or Santiago Armada was a Cuban artist and designer.

Servando Cabrera Moreno

Servando Cabrera Moreno (1923 - 1981) was a Cuban painter.

Timeline of the 1972 Atlantic hurricane season

EDT (0000 UTC September 5) – A tropical depression forms northeast of Santa Clara, Cuba.

Union blockade

The blockade runners were based in the British islands of Bermuda and the Bahamas, or Havana, in Spanish Cuba.

Year of the Lash

Year of the Lash (in Spanish, Año del Cuero) is a term used in Cuba in reference to 1844.

Yorelvis Charles

Yorelvis Charles Martínez (born September 25, 1978 in Morón, Cuba) is a third baseman for Ciego de Ávila of the Cuban National Series and has also been a member of the Cuban national baseball team.


1909 Grand Isle hurricane

On September 16, it attained the equivalent of a modern-day Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale and further strengthened to attain winds of 100 mph (155 km/h) before making landfall in Pinar del Río Province, Cuba on September 18.

1960 Caribbean Series

The XII edition of the Caribbean Series (Serie del Caribe) was a baseball tournament held from February 10 through February 15, 1960 featuring the champion teams from Cuba (Cienfuegos), Panama (Marlboro), Puerto Rico (Caguas) and Venezuela (Rapiños).

2009 World Championships in Athletics – Women's discus throw

Cuban Yarelis Barrios looked set to build upon her World and Olympic silver medals from the last two years and Aimin Song had also performed well during the season.

A. glauca

Abarema glauca, the glaucous abarema, a tree species found only in Cuba

Aldama

Yamilé Aldama (born 1972), a triple-jumper from Cuba who has represented both Sudan and Great Britain

Aldo Rafael Forte

Aldo Rafael Forte (b. Havana, Cuba, 1953 ) is a renowned American composer of Cuban descent .

Ana Rosa Núñez

In Cuba, she was head librarian of the National Audit Office (Tribunal de Cuentas de la Republica de Cuba, 1950-1961) and a founding member and vice president (1957-1959) of the Colegio Nacional de Bibliotecarios Universitarios.

Anne Aghion

In 1996, her first documentary Se le movió el piso: A portrait of Managua won the Coral Award for "Best Non-Latin American Documentary on Latin America" at the Havana Film Festival in Havana, Cuba.

Aroldis Chapman

Chapman successfully defected from Cuba while in Rotterdam, Netherlands where the Cuban national team was participating in the World Port Tournament on July 1, 2009; Chapman walked out the front door of the team hotel and entered into an automobile driven by an acquaintance.

Bonnie Bramlett

In 1979, Bonnie Bramlett travelled to Havana, Cuba, to participate in the historic Havana Jam festival that took place between 2–4 March, alongside Stephen Stills, the CBS Jazz All-Stars, the Trio of Doom, Fania All-Stars, Billy Swan, Weather Report, Mike Finnegan, Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge and Billy Joel, plus an array of Cuban artists such as Irakere, Pacho Alonso, Tata Güines and Orquesta Aragón.

Brothers to the Rescue

Following the incident, the United Nations Security Council passed Security Council Resolution 1067 (1996), a U.S.-sponsored resolution condemning Cuba.

Captaincy General of Cuba

The transfer of the Spanish part of Santo Domingo to France in 1795 in the Treaty of Basel, made Cuba the main Spanish possession in the Caribbean.

Cordelia Botkin

He reconciled with his wife before leaving for Cuba, where he helped save survivors of the Spanish battleships that were sunk at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba on 2 July 1898.

Unfortunately for him, his own work as a reporter was overshadowed by the more impressive reports sent from Cuba by Stephen Crane and Richard Harding Davis.

Cuban War of Independence

Hearst, when informed by Frederic Remington, whom he had hired to furnish illustrations for his newspaper, that conditions in Cuba were not bad enough to warrant hostilities, allegedly replied, “You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war”.

Cucurucho

Cucurucho is a local delicacy of the city of Baracoa in eastern Cuba.

Descemer Bueno

Bueno soon moved back to Cuba and began producing, arranging, and composing music for many young Cuban musicians including Haydée for Haydée Milanés, La Isla Milagrosa for William Vivanco, and Breathe for Yusa.

Emilio Echevarría

Echevarría also had small parts in two international productions, first as Raoul, a Cuban agent in the James Bond film Die Another Day and then as Antonio López de Santa Anna in The Alamo.

Erick Baker

He ended the year performing at the official Belk Bowl FanFest in Charlotte, North Carolina, along with McCain and the rock band Daughtry, as well as at a New Year's Eve show for the U.S. troops stationed at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

Estrellas de Areito

Estrellas de Areito (The Stars of Areito) was an ensemble involving over thirty of Cuba's musicians, including Rubén González, Richard Egües, Nino Rivera, Félix Chappotín, Miguelito Cuní, Pío Leyva, Arturo Sandoval, Tata Güines and Paquito D'Rivera.

Frei Betto

The prize was awarded on 28 January in Havana, Cuba, at the Third International Conference on World Balance, being held to mark the 160th anniversary of José Martí’s birth.

History of antisemitism in the United States

On 4 June 1939, having failed to obtain permission to disembark passengers in Cuba, the St. Louis was also refused permission to unload on orders of President Roosevelt as the ship waited in the Caribbean Sea between Florida and Cuba.

Internet in Cuba

According to Boris Moreno Cordoves, Deputy Minister of Informatics and Communications, the Torricelli Act (part of the United States embargo against Cuba) identified the telecommunications sector as a tool for subversion of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, and the necessary technology has been conditioned by counter-revolutionaries, but is also seen as essential for Cuba’s economic development.

JMWAVE

Under Ted Shackley's leadership from 1962 to 1965, JMWAVE grew to be the largest CIA station in the world outside of the organization's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, with 300 to 400 professional operatives (possibly including about 100 based in Cuba) as well as an estimated 15,000 anti-Castro Cuban exiles on its payroll.

Jorge Giannoni

Shortly thereafter the University of Buenos Aires was pressured by the government of Isabel Perón to close the Institute, and he had to leave the country for Peru, and then Cuba, where he resided until his return to Argentina in 1983.

Lahmard Tate

Lahmard J. Tate aka Cuba Jr. (born 1970 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American actor and is the older brother of actor Larenz Tate.

Laughlin Air Force Base

The film from Major Heyser's mission was developed, analyzed and the photos were shown to the United Nations Security Council on October 22, 1962, proving to the world, that offensive missiles were on the island of Cuba.

Loren Ross

Lost to Pablo Romero (Cuba) at the World Amateur Championships in 1986 (4-1) for the 178 pound title.

Marcelino Miyares Sotolongo

Marcelino Miyares Sotolongo is a Cuban-American marketing executive and the current President of the Christian Democratic Party of Cuba, the largest political party in Cuba other than the Communist Party of Cuba.

María Luisa Reid

Her work has appeared in collective exhibitions in France, Spain, Japan and Cuba with the most important of these being 300 Latino-americans dans l’espace in Paris, the IV Encuentro Iberoamericano de Mujeres en el Arte in Alcalá de Henares, Spain and the Viva la vida Frida in Havana.

Michelle Loughery

She has been instrumental in beginning world class mural projects in Cuba, Missouri, USA; Vernon, British Columbia and continues to work in the Country Music Capital of Canada, Merritt, British Columbia.

Nelson Villagra

After a period in Europe he went on to Cuba to work with some of the most important South American directors of his time, such as Humberto Solás (La Cantata de Chile) and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, winning the Best Actor award for his role as 'El Conde' in Gutiérrez Alea's The Last Supper at the 1978 Festival Internacional de Cine de Biarritz.

Nicolás Ruiz Espadero

Cuba was then still a Spanish colony and in all matters of administration, economy and interior and exterior policy dependent on Madrid.

Palmar de Junco

It is located at Calzada Esteban between Monserrate and San Ignacio streets in the neighborhood of Pueblo Nuevo, Matanzas, Cuba.

Raquel Olmedo

She started her career in her native Cuba before moving to Mexico in 1959 at the start of Fidel Castro's regime's rule of Cuba.

Rubalcaba

Alexis Rubalcaba (born 1972), retired boxer from Cuba, who competed in the Super Heavyweight division

Sam Green

In this "live" documentary, Green narrates the 75-minute film while a live band performs the soundtrack; the film examines various topics, including an American exile in Cuba, the world's largest shopping mall (located in China), the treatment of mass graves, and the history of the man-made language Esperanto.

Serafín García Menocal

In 1956, under his leadership, the Scouts of Cuba bought the national training grounds Campo Escuela Nacional Mayabeque at Mayabeque, in the margins of the river of the same name, near Catalina de Güines in Havana Province within 50 km of the capital.

Soledad Bravo

Considered to be one of the best voices in Latin America, one of her most popular and best known songs is Hasta Siempre, a cover of a Cuban hymn by Carlos Puebla to Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

Spanish ship Nuestra Señora de la Santísima Trinidad

The model will be displayed in the Naval Museum of La Habana, opened in June 2008 at Castillo de la Real Fuerza, the oldest building in Cuba and the oldest stone fortress in the New World.

The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall

Bremmer's J Curve describes the relationship between a country's openness and its stability; focusing on the notion that while many countries are stable because they are open (the United States, France, Japan), others are stable because they are closed (North Korea, Cuba, Iraq under Saddam Hussein).

Valkiri

Development was completed in 1981, and it was fielded in 1987 and 1988 by the South African Defense Force (SADF) in southern Angola against Cuban supported People's Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA), specifically during operations Hooper and Moduler.

Wasta

Roughly equivalent words in other languages include Sociolismo in Cuba; Blat in Russia; Guanxi in Chinese and Vetternwirtschaft in German, protektzia in Israeli slang; in Brazilian-Portuguese it is called "Pistolão", or in the slang "peixada".

Webb Hayes

He fought in Santiago de Cuba Campaign, during which he was wounded during the crossing of the San Juan River and the assault on San Juan Hill, and later in the invasion of Puerto Rico.

William R. Royal

He moved to Manatee County, Florida during the Great Depression and operated a passenger airplane service in the Bahamas and Cuba in the late 1930s.

Yank tank

Yank tank or máquina are the words used to describe the many classic cars (for example: 1957 Chevrolet, 1953 Ford, 1958 Dodge, etc.) present in Cuba with an estimated 60,000 of them still driving the roads today.