Moments in Time: Fidel Castro
The History Channel
On Feb. 16, 1959, Fidel Castro was sworn in as Cuba's prime minister after leading a guerrilla campaign that forced right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista into exile. Castro, who became commander in chief of Cuba's armed forces after Batista was ousted on Jan. 1, replaced the more moderate Miro Cardona as head of the country's new provisional government.
On Feb. 17, 1972, the 15,007,034th Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line and broke a world car-production record held for more than 40 years by the Ford Motor Company's Model T, which was manufactured from 1908 to 1927.
On Feb. 18, 1930, Elm Farm Ollie earned the remarkable distinction of becoming the first cow to fly -- and be milked -- in an airplane. Her milk was then boxed and parachuted to waiting spectators on the ground.
On Feb. 19, 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus, regarded as the father of modern astronomy, was born in Torun, a city in north-central Poland on the Vistula River. He would become the first modern European scientist to propose that Earth and other planets revolve around the sun.
On Feb. 20, 1977, an episode of the TV sitcom "Seinfeld" titled "The Pothole" debuted, with the inclusion of a storyline in which the eccentric character Kramer adopted a stretch of the fictional Arthur Burghardt Expressway via the real-life Adopt-A-Highway program.
On Feb. 21, 2016, quadruple amputee Kyle Maynard reached the summit of Mount Aconcagua, South America's tallest mountain, after bear-crawling up the nearly 23,000-foot peak without the use of his prosthetics. Four years earlier, he'd climbed Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro in the same manner.
On Feb. 22, 1983, Arthur Bicknell's play "Moose Murders" made its Broadway debut at New York's Eugene O'Neill Theater, and closed the very same night, earning it the unfortunate description by The New York Times as "the standard of awfulness against which all Broadway flops are judged." After the curtain fell on cue, there was no applause, leading one cast member to remark that "I don't think there ever was a show in the history of Broadway where you took a bow to silence."
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