The day Celia Cruz returned to Cuba

During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese VietCong guerrillas built a vast network of tunnels in the south of the country as part of the insurgency against the South Vietnamese government and their American allies. The tunnel network was a key base and shelter for the North Vietna ...  Show more

Between 1955 and 1959, a Greek-Cypriot paramilitary group called EOKA rebelled against British colonial rule in Cyprus. In response, the British authorities declared a state of emergency. A young Cypriot lawyer named Renos Lyssiotis joined EOKA. He was interrogated and imprisoned ...  Show more

In this episode of 80 Days: an exploration podcast,  we’ll be talking about Cuba, an island in the Caribbean Ocean, just 90 miles south of the US state of Florida (Full shownotes at: https://80dayspodcast.com/2017/06/10/cuba-1/). Cuba is home to over 11 million inhabitants, and i ...  Show more

In 1959, when Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries toppled Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, they wasted no time booting out American business owners, casinos and drug kingpins — much to the delight of US law enforcers. But as time passed, and Castro’s socialist regime sought ever-tric ...  Show more

New Year's Eve, 1958. Cuba's president, Fulgencio Batista, is throwing his annual New Year's Eve party at his home in Havana. It's usually a blowout. But this year, the vibes... aren't so great.  Government officials and Cuban elites drink champagne and pick at arroz con pollo as ...  Show more

It’s 1959 and the swaggering Cuban revolutionary, Fidel Castro, has just overthrown the unpopular American backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Che Guevara, the Marxist physician whose face would become an internationally recognised symbol of resistance, is at his side. But how di ...  Show more