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60 free Fidel Castro trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Fidel Castro trivia quiz covers the man who ran Cuba for more than half a century, from the Moncada Barracks to a Twitter account. The easy questions cover the basics: the dictator he overthrew, the brother who succeeded him, the Argentine doctor at his side, the failed invasion of 1961, the missiles of 1962 and the cigars he gave up in 1985. From there it moves through his birth out of wedlock on a Spanish immigrant's farm, his Jesuit schooling, the gun-toting student politics of Havana, the Bogotá riots, the divorce he learned of on the radio and the speech that ended 'History Will Absolve Me'. The harder end covers the yacht that carried 82 men and ran aground in a swamp, the New York Times interview that made him famous, the Havana Hilton penthouse, the Harlem hotel, the four-and-a-half-hour UN speech, the Escalante affair, the Ogaden, Operation Carlota in Angola, Cuito Cuanavale, the Mariel boatlift, the Ochoa executions, the Special Period, Chávez and the oil-for-doctors deal, and the funeral caravan that retraced 1959 in reverse. There are also questions on his wives, his children and Forbes' estimate of his fortune. Every answer was checked against Castro's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Che Guevara and Cuba quizzes are natural companions.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Cuban dictator did Castro's revolution overthrow at the start of 1959?
Fulgencio Batista
Batista fled on 31 December 1958 with over US$300 million; Castro reached Havana on 9 January.
Q 02From which region of Spain had Castro's father Ángel emigrated to Cuba?
Galicia
Ángel took his household servant Lina Ruz as his mistress and later wife; Fidel was born out of wedlock on the farm at Birán.
Q 03Which religious order ran the Dolores School and El Colegio de Belén, where Castro was educated?
The Jesuits
He was baptised at eight, which allowed him to attend the La Salle boarding school in Santiago.
Q 04What did Castro study at the University of Havana from 1945?
Law
He graduated as a Doctor of Law in 1950 and co-founded a legal partnership for poor clients that failed financially.
Q 05In 1947 Castro joined an expedition to overthrow which Dominican dictator?
Rafael Trujillo
He evaded arrest and returned to lead student protests in Havana.
Q 06In which capital was Castro caught up in rioting in April 1948 after Jorge Eliécer Gaitán's assassination?
Bogotá
He stole guns from a police station and joined the Liberals; the Organization of American States was founded there the same month.
Q 07Which Cuban politician's Partido Ortodoxo did Castro join in 1947, later seeing himself as his heir?
Eduardo Chibás
Castro was present at Chibás's politically motivated suicide in 1951.
Q 08On what date did Batista seize power in a coup, cancelling the elections Castro was standing in?
10 March 1952
Batista called his new system 'disciplined democracy'; Castro's legal challenges went nowhere.
Q 09Which military garrison did Castro's 165 rebels attack on 26 July 1953?
The Moncada Barracks
Three of the sixteen cars never arrived; the rebels lost six dead in the fighting and 22 more were executed without trial afterwards.
Q 10Under what title was Castro's speech at his October 1953 sentencing later published?
History Will Absolve Me
Acting as his own counsel, he named José Martí as the intellectual author of the attack; he got 15 years.
Q 11On which island was Castro imprisoned in the Presidio Modelo after Moncada?
Isla de Pinos
He ran a school for prisoners, read Marx alongside Freud and Shakespeare, and renamed his group the 26th of July Movement.
Q 12How did the imprisoned Castro learn that his wife Mirta had taken a job in Batista's Interior Ministry?
From a radio announcement
He raged that he would rather die 'a thousand times'; both filed for divorce and Mirta got custody of Fidelito.
Q 13How long did Castro actually serve of his 15-year sentence before Batista's 1955 amnesty?
About two years
Q 21On what date was Castro sworn in as Prime Minister of Cuba?
16 February 1959
He also appointed himself head of the tourist industry and tried, unsuccessfully, to lure African-American holidaymakers.
Q 22Which US vice president met Castro in Washington in April 1959 and instantly disliked him?
Richard Nixon
Eisenhower refused to see him; Nixon judged him 'either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline'.
Q 23Whose farmlands were among those seized under Castro's First Agrarian Reform of May 1959?
His own mother's
The law capped holdings at 993 acres and gave title deeds to about 200,000 peasants.
Batista, backed by the US and big business, believed Castro was no threat.
Q 14In which country did Castro form the 26th of July Movement's exile force and meet Che Guevara?
Mexico
Raúl befriended the Argentine doctor first; Fidel later called Che 'a more advanced revolutionary than I was'.
Q 15Which Spanish Civil War veteran agreed to teach Castro's exiled rebels guerrilla warfare?
Alberto Bayo
Castro toured the US for funds meanwhile and allegedly survived an assassination attempt by Batista's agents.
Q 16What was the name of the yacht that carried Castro and 81 revolutionaries to Cuba in November 1956?
Granma
The crossing was meant to take five days and took seven; the party newspaper is named after the boat.
Q 17How many of the 82 men who landed in December 1956 reached the Sierra Maestra after being ambushed?
19
The survivors included the Castro brothers, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos.
Q 18Which New York Times journalist's 1957 interview in the mountains made Castro an international celebrity?
Herbert Matthews
CBS and Paris Match reporters soon followed him into the Sierra Maestra.
Q 19What was Batista's all-out 1958 offensive against the Sierra Maestra called?
Operation Verano
Ten thousand soldiers under General Cantillo surrounded the mountains, and many of them defected.
Q 20On arriving in the capital in January 1959, where did Castro set up his home and office?
The penthouse of the Hilton hotel
He had a moderate lawyer, Manuel Urrutia, installed as president but ruled by decree himself.
Q 24Which Russian-American gangster said before his death that Cuba had 'ruined' him?
Meyer Lansky
The CIA later allied with the Mafia, aggrieved at losing its brothels and casinos, in plots against Castro.
Q 25Which slogan did Castro use in April 1959 to announce that the promised vote would be postponed?
'Revolution first, elections later'
In a May Day speech in 1960 he cancelled all future elections, calling Cuba a direct democracy.
Q 26The 1960 explosion of which French vessel in Havana prompted Castro's first 'Patria o Muerte'?
La Coubre
The ship carried Belgian arms; the cause was never determined but Castro insinuated US sabotage.
Q 27Where in Harlem did Castro stay for the 1960 UN General Assembly, receiving Khrushchev, Nasser and Nehru?
The Hotel Theresa
He met Malcolm X there and chose Harlem in solidarity with its poor Black residents.
Q 28How long was Castro's 1960 speech to the UN General Assembly, the longest ever delivered there?
Four and a half hours
It was the same session at which Khrushchev banged his shoe on his desk.
Q 29What were the neighbourhood spying organisations Castro created in September 1960 called?
Committees for the Defense of the Revolution
By 1970 a third of Cubans belonged to a CDR, eventually rising to 80%.
Q 30On what date did the US impose its economic embargo by prohibiting most exports to Cuba?
13 October 1960
Cuba retaliated by seizing 383 private businesses the next day and 166 US companies later that month.