Short answers, pulled from the story.
Cuba gained formal independence on the 20th of May 1902 as the Republic of Cuba, following the Spanish-American War of 1898. Spain had relinquished sovereignty over Cuba through the Treaty of Paris, signed after the war.
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 arose after the Soviet Union deployed R-12 missiles in Cuba, partially in response to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961. It is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into nuclear war.
Miguel Díaz-Canel was elected president of the State Council on the 18th of April 2018 and became First Secretary of the Communist Party on the 19th of April 2021. He is the first Cuban leader born after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and the first non-Castro to hold the top position since 1959.
The United States embargo against Cuba began in 1960, making it one of the longest-running trade and economic measures in bilateral relations history. It was initiated in response to Cuba's nationalization of American properties valued at over $1 billion.
Cuba deployed more than 65,000 troops and 400 Soviet-made tanks to Angola in November 1975 in one of the fastest military mobilizations in history. More than 300,000 Cuban military personnel and civilian experts were deployed across Africa during the Cold War, including operations in Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and South Yemen.
The Special Period refers to a severe economic downturn Cuba experienced following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, which ended Soviet subsidies worth $4 billion to $6 billion annually. Cuba's GDP shrank by 35% from the start of the crisis until 1995, with shortages of food and fuel widespread throughout the country.