According to the historians of the Island of Freedom, there have been 637 assassination attempts on the permanent Cuban commander Fidel Castro. And none of these attempts reached their goal, as Castro died at a respectable age at home, surrounded by loving relatives and party friends, outliving most of those who planned to eliminate him.

If we set aside the most obvious attempts to kill the commander, what is called a “blow in the face” - by firing on his boat, personal plane, landing on the shore of Cuba, then attention should be paid to individual operations, carefully planned by the U.S. intelligence services and so failed to achieve the goal.

At the very beginning of the revolutionary activity, a professional liquidator recruited in the United States managed to pass himself off as a peasant and join the commander's squad. When the rebels stopped for the night, it turned out that the killer had nothing to hide in. And then Fidel himself shared his own blanket with the agent. The professional killer spent the whole night lying side by side with his victim, but never decided to pull the trigger. In the morning, he fled the camp in disgrace.

And this assassination attempt took place in 1960. The US recruited Fidel's former mistress, the sultry beauty Marita Lorenz. They specifically decided to use her to send the Cuban leader to the grave. For this purpose, a plan was devised: Marita is supplied with pills with the strongest poison, she goes to Havana, meets with Castro, seduces him for old memories, and at a romantic dinner slips poison into the wine.

Everything went according to the notes - and the ardent Fidel was very happy to see his former girlfriend, and the dinner was to be held in a secluded place, and there were practically no guards around. But the hapless agentess overdid it with the pills, hiding them in a jar of night cream. And when it came time to get them out, she was horrified to see that the gelatin shell had dissolved and the poison had gotten into the cream. This is so knocked out of the fatal beauty that she did not even notice how Fidel came from behind.

Castro nobly offered the woman a gun that she immediately did the intended, but Marita arranged a typical female hysteria and all in tears and smeared makeup confessed to Fidel that still loves him. And further historians write that the noble leader magnanimously forgave the beauty and sent her away forever from Liberty Island. It all sounds fantastic, of course, but it is damn romantic and a little “Bond-like”.

In 1963, the famous American lawyer James Donovan was to go to Cuba, who had a responsible mission - to negotiate with the Commander on the release of several American hostages. The CIA decided to take advantage of the opportunity and once again try to eliminate the Cuban leader. It was decided to use the lawyer what is called, “in the dark”. As a gift for Castro was chosen quite expensive aqualung (everyone knew the passion of the Cuban leader to diving). But this aqualung was not a simple one - the breathing tubes of the suit were treated with Koch's bacilli - microorganisms that cause tuberculosis. And for insurance purposes, the lower part of the scuba diving suit was additionally treated with bacteria causing a rare disease called Madura foot.

But the brilliant plan failed. While already in Cuba, Donovan for some reason thought that the aqualung was too modest a present for the head of state and left it with him. It is not known whether Castro received any gift from Donovan's hands, but the fact that he remained unharmed afterwards is an indisputable fact.

If it was not possible to play on the hobby of the commander, then it will be possible to use his bad habit, the CIA reasoned and specially for Castro made poisoned cigars of his favorite brand “Cohiba”. They were treated with botulinum toxin - a deadly substance, the strongest organic poison in the world. Unfortunately, the fate of these cigars remained unclear, but the head of the Cuban secret service Fabian Escalante in his memoirs wrote that in 1960 his service found a poisoned cigar lying on the table of the Commander. Its source is unclear and this assassination attempt can be considered perhaps the most serious of all that have occurred.

Not abandoning the idea of poisoning, the CIA once again decided to resort to poison, choosing thallium. One of the salts of this metal has extremely toxic properties. Moreover, death comes not immediately, but after a certain time. But before that, the person's joints begin to ache, he is feverish, and, most importantly - the hair falls out. According to the plan of the secret service in the first place thallium should deprive the commander of his famous beard, and then slowly kill him.

The poison was supposed to be slipped into Castro's shoes during his foreign visit. After staying in a hotel, Fidel was supposed to put his shoes outside the room to clean them. It was at the dawn of his reign, and Castro did not have numerous and harsh security guards back then. But the plan once again failed - as if sensing something wrong, Fidel time after time postponed his foreign visits. And then the U.S. military operation in the Bay of Pigs (an attempt to overthrow Castro openly) broke out and the idea of the leader's boots was finally forgotten.

It took place in 2000 during Fidel Castro's visit to Panama. 90 kilograms of TNT were placed under the podium from which the Cuban leader was to address the Panamanians with a fiery speech. But even here the organizers had a fiasco - the Cuban security services promptly acted and prevented the explosion.