Slideshow: The Cuban revolution at 50

Fidel Castro with soldiers of his rebel army en route for Havana, after a two year civil war that defeated the Batista regime. Castro, who had previously led a failed coup attempt in 1953, had organised and trained for the uprising in Mexico and travelled to the US to raise money from Cuban ex-patriots.

Manuel Urrutia (centre) is declared president in January 1959. A vocal opponent of brothels and casinos, Urrutia is seen as a moderate figure by the US, which extends diplomatic relations. His short-lived presidency ends in July, when Castro pushes him out of office in retaliation for speaking out against communism. But Castro doesn't call the revolution "socialist" until the run-up to the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion or himself "Marxist-Leninist" until the following December. Castro, who had served as prime minister since February 1961, becomes president in 1976 after the prime minister's office is abolished.

An advertisement on the Miami waterfront welcomes Americans to Cuba, but US - Cuba relations had already deteriorated after Cuba confiscated land from US citizens. By November, Cuba had also taken over virtually all US assets including sugar mills, oil refiners, railways, and hotels and the US had declared a full economic embargo on the island.

Fidel Castro entertains a group of people at a dinner table in Harlem during a trip to New York, while members of the press take photographs. In November 1960, Castro becomes the first head of state to visit the UN to stay in the predominantly black New York neighbourhood.

Young women working for a literacy campaign parading with big pencils in the streets of Havana during the revolution. The campaign succeeded in its aim of ending illiteracy within a year and paved the way for Cuba's other health and education missions, which have left the Caribbean Island with the Human Development Index's fifth highest ranking in Latin America, behind Barbados, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.

Some of the 1,179 US-backed mercenaries and Cuban exiles before a revolutionary court in Havana, being tried for their part in the Bay of Pigs invasion. A handful were executed or received 30-year prison terms, but the vast majority were exchanged for $53m in food and medicine from the US. The prisoners had been subjected to televised interviews, including one in which Castro participated. This wasn't the first incident where trials were televised: after the revolution, some members of the Batista regime were executed after trials were broadcast from Havana sports stadium.

Three Soviet ships waiting to be loaded with missiles in the naval port of Mariel in accordance with the US-Soviet agreement on their withdrawal. The missiles removal was largely negotiated between Washington and Moscow, without Cuban input. Though Moscow agreed that UN weapons inspectors would be allowed in Cuba, Havana balked and ground inspections were never conducted.

Farm workers in Cuba demonstrate how cane is cut. Cuba - long economically dependant on the crop - began selling sugar to the Soviet Union in 1960, after the US stopped buying from the island. From the early 1960s until the Gorbachev era, Moscow bought sugar from Cuba at preferential rates. But in the post-cold war period, Cuba was forced to shut down plants, took steps to diversify its agricultural production and began investing in the tourism industry.

Fidel Castro gives a speech at a rally in the Plaza de la Revolución, commemorating the 14th anniversary of the founding of the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution. CDR's, or local block committees, are a link between neighbourhoods and the local government and have been credited with encouraging school enrolment, and publicising health and savings campaigns. They are also thought to be instrumental in monitoring micro-level private sector work, both at the time Castro made small private businesses illegal in 1968 and after they were legalised again some 25 years later.

Weapons on display in a 1976 military parade. Early in the year, Cuba adopted its first socialist constitution, which created a new governing structure guaranteeing basic human rights, including freedom of speech, as long as they posed no threat to socialism. The country had recently held the Cuban Communist Party's first congress, which adopted a five year economic plan mirroring the Soviet model.

A group of Cuban soldiers help the Angolan regular army fight against apartheid South Africa-backed forces. Later that year, an influx of Cuban troops effectively helps to end the war in a battle at Cuito Cuanavale, more than a decade after it first sent troops to the African country. Cuba has a long history of lending military support to left-leaning movements in Africa, including Lumumba's Congo (now the DRC) and the National Liberation Front in Algeria.

Castro and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev shake hands. Changes in the Soviet Union bode poorly for the island nation's economy: Cuban officials later say the economy shrunk 35 per cent in the years after the Soviet Union's demise.

US coast guards scramble to rescue a group of Cuban refugees after their raft capsized some 25 miles off the coast of Cuba in the Florida Straits. The US has had a uniquely generous immigration policy toward Cubans: the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act allowed Cubans to in the US to become permanent residents, though US President Bill Clinton's 1995 'wet feet/dry feet' policy modified the act to prevent those found at sea from being granted US residency. Around a million Cubans have immigrated to the US since 1959.

Members of 'Brothers to the Rescue' hold a press conference with a map showing the location where two of their planes were shot down by Cuban fighter jets off the Cuban coast. Cuba had previously warned that planes caught in Cuban airspace would be shot down, and said it had radar proof that the plane was inside its airspace, a claim the US disputed. Pressure, in part resulting from the attack, leads US president Bill Clinton to sign the Helms-Burton Act, the second under his presidency to effectively strengthen the Cuban embargo. The most controversial part of the act would have effectively prevented any company from doing business in Cuba by giving US citizens, including Cuban-Americans, who had their property expropriated the right to sue any company involved in a joint venture on the land. Under international pressure, every six months since July 1996, the US president waives that clause.

Elián Gonzalez is cradled by his grandfather Rolando Betancourt following his arrival at Havana's Jose Martí International Airport on June 28 2000. Elian's return home to Cuba ends a bitter custody dispute and hands a major political victory to President Fidel Castro. The battle for the boy came to symbolise four decades of bitterness between Cuban exiles and the country they had fled.

Castro confers with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in Bolivar City in August 2001. Cuba finds another source of low-cost oil, absent since the Soviet Union's downfall, in Chávez's Venezuela: much of the cost is paid by sending tens of thousands of health care workers to work in low-income neighbourhoods in the South American country. Cuba and Venezuela have continued to cement their relationship, with Venezuela agreeing to multi-billion dollar investments in Cuba's oil and petrochemical industries.

European Union - Cuba relations are strained after Cuba executes the hijackers of a ferry (pictured above), soon after a political crackdown which left 75 dissidents with prison terms between six and 28 years. Relations further deteriorated when the European parliament awarded a human rights award to the Ladies in White, relatives of the prisoners who spoke out against their arrests. But ties between the groups improved and in June 2008, the European Union dropped all diplomatic sanctions against Cuba.

A supermarket employee checks the authenticity of a Cuban convertible peso note received from a customer in November 2004 in Havana. Earlier in the year, Cuba instituted a 10 per cent commission to be charged on dollar transactions in retaliation for increased US sanctions. Other currencies, including the Canadian dollar and the euro, were not subject to the measures. The dollar had been legal in Cuba since 1993, when the end of the cold war left the country starved of hard currency.

Raúl Castro, the new president of Cuba, smiles at the Cuban National Assembly. Castro had acted as president since mid-2006 when his older brother, Fidel, became ill. The younger Castro was part of the original guerrilla movement which overthrew the Batista regime, and had long served as vice-president and head of the armed forces. Since taking power, Castro has instituted modest reforms, including allowing Cubans to buy previously forbidden goods such as DVD players and mobile phones and taking steps to decentralise Cuba's agricultural system.

Trucks lead the parade commemorating the 50th anniversary of Fidel Castro's entry in Havana from Sierra Maestra