Profile:Fidel Castro ruled Cuba unchallenged for nearly half a century, was hated by the United States, and was at the centre of the Cuban missile crisis that brought the two nations to the brink of nuclear war.
Fidel Castro was born on August 13th, 1926, attending Catholic schools before graduating from the University of Havana with a degree in law.
Two years later, he ran for election to the Cuban House of Representatives, but the elections were halted by the-then dictator Fulgencio Batista. As a result, an enraged Castro assembled a small force and attacked the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba in 1953.
It failed and most of his supporters were killed or captured. Castro was captured and sentenced to 15 years in prison, but he was pardoned after just two years.
Castro went into exile in Mexico where he trained a group of revolutionaries called the 26th of July Movement. In December 1956, his forces, supported by Che Guevara and others, invaded Cuba from the ship Grammabut suffered serious losses.
However, the revolutionaries hid in the Sierra Maestra mountains, gaining support among the peasants. Eventually, on January 1st, 1959, Batista fled the island and Castro assumed power.
Castro proceeded to nationalise all American property, leading to relentless hostility from the United States.
The CIA tried all manner of ways to assassinate him, including a bizarre exploding cigar, designed to detonate when Castro puffed on it, and booby-trapped seashells in spots where he used to enjoy diving.
In 1961, the Americans tried to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, but the Cubans successfully fought them off.
In October 1962, the world held its breath for 12 tense days after President John F Kennedy discovered that Kremlin leader Nikita Khruschev was placing nuclear missile installations on the island.
The crisis - probably the most perilous time of the cold war - eased only when Khruschev backed down and said the installations would be dismantled.
The Cuban economy was propped up by the Soviet Union - a further source of friction between Cuba and the United States - with the Kremlin purchasing vast amounts of sugar and supplying Castro with economic and military aid.
But the collapse of communism and the destruction of the Soviet Union reduced Cuba to a dire economic state and left Castro a diminished international figure. Even so, he remained unchallenged.
But in July 2006, ill health caused him to delegate most of his duties to his brother, Raul Castro. This transfer was supposed to be temporary while Fidel recovered from surgery for "an acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding".
Today, however, Castro officially resigned after 49 years as Cuba's leader.