On the 26th of July 1953 Fidel and Raul Castro and a band of ill-prepared would-be rebels attacked the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba, in a futile effort to unseat dictator Fulgencio Batista, who had seized the presidency in March 1952.

The attack was as bloody as it was disastrous. Fifteen soldiers and three policemen were killed and 23 soldiers and five policemen wounded during the attack to the Moncada Barracks. Nine of Fidel’s “rebels” were killed in combat, 11 wounded, four of them by friendly fire, and 42 were executed later.

Fidel and Raul escaped unharmed and were imprisoned in very cushy fashion due to the fact that Fidel was married to a prominent socialite at the time, Mirta Francisca de la Caridad Díaz-Balart y Gutiérrez . Fidel used his time behind bars to write a memoir-cum-manifesto “History Will Absolve Me” that aped his idol and role model Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and which he delivered as a four-hour speech at his trial. The cushiness of his imprisonment also allowed him to begin an adulterous romance with another socialite, Naty Revuelta, with whom he would eventually sire a daughter.