Chronology

11/06/1940
  •  He begins high school.  He enrolls simultaneously at the Colegio de Dolores and the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza de Santiago de Cuba.
06/11/1940
  • He writes a letter in English to President  Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States, impressed by his prestige and international events. Some time later, he writes a second letter to the US leader.
10/05/1941
  • For the second time he is registered in the Cueto Civil Registry Office, in Folio 129, Volume No. 14, as Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz.
03/09/1942
  • He is enrolled at the famous Colegio de Belén in Havana, a school also run by the Jesuit order; this is where he graduates from high school.
22/03/1943
  • He takes part in the Scientific-Pedagogic Debate at the Colegio de Belén and makes a speech on the relationship between official and private education in the U.S., France, England, Spain, Holland, Turkey, Germany, Russia and Cuba.  
26/04/1943
  • His parents Ángel Castro and Lina Ruz make official their union of many years in a discrete and simple marriage ceremony before Dr. Amador Ramírez Sigas, the municipal judge and official in charge of the Cueto Civil Registry Office.
11/12/1943
  •  For the third time he is registered in the Cueto Civil Registry Office in Oriente province in  Folio 279, Volume No. 16.
27/06/1945
  • Fidel graduates from the Colegio de Belén as a Bachelor of Arts. In the school yearbook his professors write “Fidel Castro always excelled in all the subjects that were related to arts and letters…He was a true athlete, earning admiration and affection from all. He shall be entering Law and we have no doubts that he shall be writing brilliant entries in the volume of his life. Fidel is highly capable and has the soul of an artist.”
07/08/1945
  • While on vacation in Santiago de Cuba he reads in the newspapers the shocking news of the United States launching an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. He would never forget the profound shock that event caused him.
04/09/1945
  • Fidel enrols at the University of Havana in the Faculties of Law and Social Sciences.