Angel Valodia Matos and his coach Leudis Gonzalez have been banned for life after the Cuban taekwondo fighter kicked a Swedish referee square in the face in protest at being disqualified for exceeding a minute’s injury time during the bronze-medal match at the Beijing Olympics last night.
Fidel Castro was born Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz on this day, August 13th, 1926, near Birán, S Cuba.
He was a revolutionary, premier of Cuba (1959-76) and president of the Council of State and of the Council of Ministers (1976- to date). As a student leader and lawyer, Castro opposed the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar.
On July 26, 1953, he led an unsuccessful attack on an army post in Santiago de Cuba and was imprisoned. Released in 1955 during a general amnesty, he went to Mexico where he organized the 26th of July movement. In Dec., 1956, he landed in SW Oriente prov. with a small group of rebels. Castro and 11 others, including his brother Raúl and Ernesto "Che" Guevara, survived the initial encounter and hid in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. There, they organized a guerrilla campaign that eventually toppled the Batista regime on Jan. 1, 1959.
Errol Flynn was born in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia on 20th June 1902. He moved to England to gain acting experience, joined the Northampton Repertory Company, and after a part in a film was offered a Hollywood contract. His first US film, Captain Blood (1935), established him as a hero of historical adventure films, and his good looks and athleticism confirmed him as the greatest Hollywood swashbuckler, in such films as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and The Sea Hawk (1940). During the 1940s his off-screen reputation for drinking, drug-taking, and womanizing became legendary, and eventually affected his career, which was briefly revived by his acclaimed performance as a drunken wastrel in The Sun Also Rises (1957). His autobiography was called My Wicked, Wicked Ways (1959).
Still Photographic Collage of Errol Flynn
"Just Like Errol Flynn" (music by Dogs D'amour)
Errol Flynn in "The Charge of the Light Brigade"
In January 1959, Fidel Castro led his Cuban revolutionaries into Havana. It's a huge story, and the Canadian TV show Front Page Challenge has found an unlikely mystery guest: Errol Flynn, a Hollywood actor in the twilight of his career.
Famed for playing dashing swashbucklers, Flynn put on a reporter's hat while in Cuba for the revolution. Despite rumours he fought alongside the rebels, Flynn tells the panel he "didn't pick up anything more dangerous than a ballpoint pen."
