HARI SREENIVASAN, PBS NEWSHOUR WEEKEND: His communist revolution outlasted 10 American presidencies and withstood half a century of American economic embargo.
He survived numerous attempts to overthrow or assassinate him.
He fought off one U.S.-backed invasion at a little known beach called Playa Giron, in what Americans came to know as the Bay of Pigs and helped unleash a superpower confrontation by installing soviet missiles in Cuba.
The world had seen little of the Cuban leader in the past decade after serious intestinal illness struck in 2006.
In 2008, he stepped down as president, putting his brother — army head Raul Castro — at the country's helm.
This feeble old man in a track suit was a pale shadow of the overconfident 32-year-old guerrilla who shook up the western hemisphere.
Fidel Castro triumphantly took control of Cuba on January 1, 1959.
He rolled into Havana atop a tank a week later.
He came down from his guerrilla stronghold in the Sierra Maestra Mountains — joined by his partner in revolution — the Argentine Che Guevara and a small rebel army. They had toppled the right wing dictator Fulgencio Batista, who had been in and out of power in Cuba for 25 years.
Castro quickly nationalized U.S.-owned companies and property in Cuba, along with church holdings, and the farms and businesses of wealthy and middle class Cubans.
The U.S. responded with an economic boycott that lasted decades.
And Castro began an alliance with America's superpower rival, the Soviet Union.
CASTRO: "Viva la amistad entre las personas de la Union sovietica y cuba!"
SREENIVASAN: Departing president Dwight Eisenhower, severed all links with Cuba.
JAMES HAGERTY, PRESS SECRETARY, 1961: There is a limit to what the united states and self-respect can endure. That limit has now been reached. Our friendship for the Cuban people is not affected.
SREENIVASAN: The hardships placed upon the Cuban economy, and Castro's repression of his Cuban opposition sparked a series of mass migrations that would profoundly affect the United States, and the future of U.S.-Cuba relations.
The new American president, John Kennedy, picked up one of his predecessor's plans — an armed overthrow of Castro.
The CIA trained an army of 1200 Cuban exiles to invade and begin a popular uprising.
On April 17, 1961 the small, counter-revolutionary force stormed the beach on Cuba's south-east coast.
Many Cuban people rallied to Castro and his forces quickly put down the Bay of Pigs invasion.
It was a disaster for the new Kennedy Administration.
But the following year brought a new confrontation and even more danger.
On October 16, 1962, U.S. spy planes photographed the construction of a soviet missile site in Cuba.
A crisis ensued which brought the world the closest it had ever come to nuclear annihilation. A U.S. naval blockade, called a "quarantine" was forced on Cuba. Kennedy took to the airwaves and warned of the consequences.