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A Sports Dispute Started the Cuban Missile Crisis and Other Odd Facts

Khalid Elhassan October 28, 2019 31 min

36. ‘Beisbol‘ Repeatedly Tipped the Cubans’ Hand Throughout the Cold War

Cubans’ love of baseball made baseball diamonds a ubiquitous part of the Cuban landscape. That allowed American aerial photo analysts to guesstimate the amount of Cuban activity in an area by counting the number of baseball diamonds there. And since Cubans played baseball wherever they went, baseball diamonds on a landscape became an easy tell, allowing US analysts to determine that Cubans were present.

In 1975, after Angola gained its independence from Portugal, Cuban military advisors were sent to back the socialist Movimento Popular de Libertecao de Angola (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA) against rival factions supported by America and apartheid South Africa. US eyes in the sky were able to track Cuban presence by the presence of baseball diamonds.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.