The US tried to overthrow the communist government in Cuba—and failed

Hear about the US role in the Cuban Revolution—and the blowback it caused

Against long odds, Fidel Castro launched a socialist revolution just 90 miles from the US and kept it alive for decades. This 10-part podcast traces Washington’s pivot from early support to an obsessive campaign of sabotage and hundreds of alleged assassination plots.

The US intervened in Latin America to block communist influence during the Cold War

Fearing Soviet expansion, the US intervened across Latin America by backing coups, funding right-wing regimes, and supporting anti-communist militias—most notably in Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Fidel Castro

From exploding cigars and poisoned Cohibas to an infected scuba suit and plans to drug a TV studio with LSD, this account catalogs the CIA's strangest—and consistently unsuccessful—attempts to kill Fidel Castro over decades.

The Cuban Revolution explained

Between 1953 and 1959, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara led a small guerrilla movement that toppled Cuba’s Batista dictatorship and created the Western Hemisphere’s first socialist state—reshaping Cuban society and permanently transforming US–Cuba relations.

The US embargo on Cuba was designed to cause hardship and eventual regime change

A secret 1960 memo by State Department official Lester Mallory argued that trade restrictions were “the only foreseeable means” to unseat Castro by provoking hunger and desperation. This page compiles declassified US documents detailing that strategy and its aftermath.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

See a timeline of the tumultuous relationship between Cuba and the US since 1959

Only 90 miles separate Cuba from the US, yet Cold War hostility froze relations for decades. This timeline traces six decades of tension, from revolution and missile crisis to renewed hardline US policies reintroduced in 2025

The CIA tried to poison Castro’s milkshake

During the Cold War, the CIA engaged in a series of "creative" attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro—including poisoning his daily chocolate milkshake with botulinum toxins. It was not successful.

Since the revolution, approximately 1.4 million Cubans have fled to the US

Although Castro initially enjoyed broad support after toppling Batista in 1959, nearly 2 million Cubans chose exile in the years that followed. Most settled in the US, while others dispersed across Latin America and Europe, shaping migration patterns that persist to this day

Pre-revolution Cuba was prosperous—and deeply unequal

On the eve of Castro’s 1959 revolution, Cuba ranked among Latin America’s most advanced societies, with high incomes and health outcomes. Yet stark racial, rural, and political inequalities—compounded by corruption and US intervention—made the system weak and primed for revolt.

The failed Bay of Pigs invasion led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation

Moscow's decision to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba—just 90 miles from the US—pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war. To prevent future crises, both sides later set up a direct hotline and boosted arms-control diplomacy

A secret airlift sent 14,000 Cuban children to the US

As part of the covert Operation Pedro Pan, roughly 14,000 Cuban children were quietly flown to the US in the early 1960s—often with no warning, no luggage, and no certainty they would ever see their parents again.

Watergate's anti-Castro Latino burglars believed they were fighting communism

Among the Watergate burglars, Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, and Eugenio Martínez were Cuban American anti-Castro exiles who believed they were combating communist influence in the United States.

A movie helped make JFK assassination conspiracies widespread

Oliver Stone's film "JFK" (1991) imagined the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy as the result of a conspiracy by US government agents. Before the film, this belief was not common, but it became widely adopted afterward. The film's impact contributed to the release of major CIA files in subsequent decades. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Fueled by Cold War competition, the Apollo program put humankind on the moon

Despite the US starting the space race behind the Soviet Union, which had put a cosmonaut into space in 1961, the successful landing of Apollo 11 on the moon in 1969 was seen as a defining victory for America.

The second attack used to justify full-scale US involvement in Vietnam never happened as reported

In August 1964, Washington claimed that North Vietnam launched two attacks on US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. The second, used to justify escalating the US war effort, was later revealed to most likely have been a radar mistake.

US intelligence failures contributed to the success of the Japanese attack

Despite breaking Japan’s diplomatic codes, US agencies failed to integrate warnings, successfully track Japan’s carriers, or even believe a Hawaii strike was possible (they also had not cracked Japan’s naval codes). Missed signals, ignored reports and poor coordination led to one of the worst intelligence failures in US history.

Mohammad Mosaddegh was ousted in a CIA-backed coup in 1953

Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Mosaddegh, nationalized the country's oil industry in 1951, challenging British and American control of Iran's resources. The CIA and British intelligence orchestrated a coup that ousted him and reinstated the Shah, fueling decades of Iranian distrust of the West.

Brazil's military dictatorship led to bossa nova's decline

In 1964, Brazil's president João Goulart was overthrown by a military coup supported by the US State Department. Scholars argue that the events led to the decline of bossa nova, with many Brazilians believing its pleasant sounds and picturesque lyrics were tone-deaf to the politically fraught moment.

Sartre eventually denounced communism

The French philosopher was a long-time ardent supporter of communism and the USSR. He finally spoke out against the movement with the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, saying that the move was "made possible by 12 years of terror and imbecility."

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, due to economic decline and political unrest

By the late 1980s, the Soviet economy was stagnating and its political system was under tremendous strain. Soviet reforms failed to reverse the decline, and growing independence movements led to the USSR’s formal dissolution in 1991.

The Nixon administration tried and failed to stop the press from publishing the Pentagon Papers

In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled against the government's attempt to block The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing classified documents on the Vietnam War, delivering a landmark victory for press freedom.

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

Thousands of constitutional amendments have failed

Of nearly 12,000 proposed constitutional amendments, only 27 were ratified. This article highlights radical failed proposals that would have renamed the country, abolished the presidency, capped personal wealth, or fundamentally rewritten how American democracy works.

The US finished what the French had started with Panama's canal

For about two decades, Suez Canal-builder and Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps led the project, but financial troubles forced it into the hands of the US, who completed it in 1914. This timeline, made to accompany the definitive PBS American Experience documentary about the canal, highlights major moments in its construction.

A major US-designed polio vaccine was first tested in the Soviet Union

Albert Sabin's live attenuated virus vaccine—requiring two drops in the mouth—didn't garner political support in the US, so it was tested in the Soviet Union in the late 1950s.

The UN’s 1990s peacekeeping mission in Rwanda failed to prevent a genocide

During a 100-day period in 1994, nearly 1 million Tutsi and moderate Hutu civilians were murdered, a tragedy that exemplified the limitations of the UN’s ability to protect populations from mass killing.

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to spread in public, was written as a practical joke by Richard Skrenta, a Pittsburgh high school student.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

Hurricanes, which rely on air consistently spinning in the same direction, cannot cross the equator because air curves in opposite directions north and south of it.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in terms of casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.