Short answers, pulled from the story.
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who led Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving first as prime minister from 1959 to 1976 and then as president from 1976 to 2008. He was the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1965 until 2011. He is recognized as the longest-serving non-royal head of state of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Castro agreed to allow the Soviet Union to install nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962, believing the missiles would guarantee Cuba's security and strengthen socialism. When the US discovered the missiles through aerial reconnaissance and imposed a naval quarantine, Castro urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear strike on the US if Cuba were invaded. Khrushchev negotiated a withdrawal of the missiles without consulting Castro, leaving him furious and feeling betrayed.
On the 26th of July 1953, Castro led 165 fighters in an attack on the Moncada Barracks outside Santiago de Cuba. The operation failed when the alarm was raised and most rebels were pinned down by machine gun fire; six rebels were killed and fifteen wounded during the assault. In the aftermath, Batista's soldiers captured, tortured, and executed twenty-two rebels without trial, and Castro was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
In the first thirty months of Castro's government, more classrooms were opened than had been built in the previous thirty years. Healthcare was nationalized, with rural health centers and polyclinics providing free medical care, universal childhood vaccination, and sharply reduced infant mortality rates. The 1959 agrarian reform distributed title deeds to around two hundred thousand peasants and within a year redistributed fifteen percent of the national wealth.
The Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961 was a CIA-backed operation in which a 1,400-strong exile force called Brigade 2506, trained in Nicaragua, landed in Cuba to overthrow Castro. Castro personally directed the counter-offensive and forced the brigade to surrender on the 20th of April 1961. The 1,189 captured fighters were interrogated on live television and eventually returned to the US in exchange for medicine and food.
Fidel Castro died in November 2016 from natural causes at the age of 90. He had transferred his governmental responsibilities to his brother Raúl Castro in 2006, and Raúl was formally elected president by the National Assembly in 2008.