Today Is...Fidel Castro Retires As President of Cuba

The Americans tried everything to topple Fidel Castro and the man who is loved and hated in equal measure, surviving everything the USA threw at him including the brilliant loopy plan to make Castro believe God was going to get him by projecting images of Jesus Christ onto low-lying clouds while a military plane, using powerful loudspeakers would 'speak' but disappointingly the US military decided against following up the plan and decided to carry on with the exploding cigars ploy instead but don't you wish they had given it a go.
Instead he survived a reported 600 plus attempts on his life and outlasted 10 different American Presidents only to die of old age in his own bed but it was no mean feat that in the face of the USA's crippling embargo, to achieve an enviable national health system, one of the highest rates of literacy in the Western World and one of the lowest infant mortality rates is definitely a superb legacy.
On the opposite side of the coin, the long dictatorship bought a bankrupt country, an impoverished population, a terrible oppression system, a lack of civil rights and one political party led by one man which is not such a hot legacy.
That is for Historians to argue over but the bottom line is at the end of his time did he improve things for his countrymen and in some ways he very much did but in some other ways he toppled a nasty, repressive regime only to replace it with another nasty, repressive regime.
To many on the left he is a hero purely because he continually foiled and thumbed his nose at the overbearing Americans but that is to overlook his many failings but to many of the right he was an evil villain but that overlooks the many successes and improvements he bought to his countrymen.