• The first nation in Latin America to use steam engines and boats was Cuba, in 1829.
• The first nation in Latin America and the third in the world (after England and the USA), to have a railroad was Cuba, in 1837.
• It was a Cuban who first applied ether anesthesia in Latin America in 1847.
• The first worldwide demonstration of an electricity-powered industry was in Havana in 1877.
• In 1881, it was a Cuban doctor, Carlos J. Finlay, who discovered the yellow fever transmitting agent and defined its prevention and treatment.
• The first electrical lighting system in all of Latin America and Spain was installed in Cuba in 1889.
• Between 1825 and 1897, 60 to 75% of all gross income that Spain received from abroad came from Cuba.
• Before the end of the 18th century, Cuba abolished bullfighting because it considered them “unpopular, bloodthirsty and abusive to animals”.
• The first “electric car” that circulated in Latin America was in Havana in 1900.
• Also in 1900, before in any other country in Latin America, it was to Havana that the first car arrived.
• The first city in the world to have direct dial phones (no operator needed) was Havana, in 1906.
• In 1907, the first X-ray machine in Latin America was released in Havana.
• On May 19, 1913, Cubans Agustin Parla and Rosillo Domingo, who first flew across Latin America, between Cuba and Key West, lasted an hour and forty minutes.
• The first country in Latin America to grant a divorce was Cuba, in 1918.
• The first Latin American to win a world chess championship was the Cuban, José Raúl Capablanca. He won all the 1921-1927 world championships.
• In 1922, Cuba was the second country in the world to open a radio station and the first country in the world to broadcast a music concert and make radio news.
• The first radio announcer in the world was a Cuban: Esther Perea de la Torre. In 1928, Cuba had 61 radio stations, 43 of them in Havana, ranking fourth in the world, second only to the USA, Canada and the Soviet Union. Cuba was the first in the world in number of stations by population and territorial area.
• In 1937, Cuba was the first country in all of Latin America to decree an 8-hour working day, the minimum wage and university autonomy.
• In 1940, Cuba was the first country in Latin America to have a black president, elected by universal suffrage, by an absolute majority, when the majority of the population was white. Therefore, the United States advanced in 68 years.
• In 1940, Cuba approved one of the most advanced constitutions in the world. In Latin America, it was the first country to grant women the right to vote, equal rights between sexes and races, as well as the right of women to work.
• The feminist movement in Latin America first appeared in the late thirties in Cuba. It anticipated Spain by 36 years, which will only grant Spanish women the right to vote, the possession of their children, as well as being able to obtain a passport or have the right to open a bank account without her husband’s authorization, after 1976.
• In 1942, a Cuban became the first Latin American musical director of a worldwide film production and also the first to receive an Oscar nomination. His name: Ernesto Lecuona.
• The second country in the world to broadcast on TV was Cuba in 1950. The biggest stars in all of America went to Havana to play on their television channels.
• The first hotel to have air conditioning in the world was built in Havana: the Hotel Riviera in 1951.
• The first building constructed in reinforced concrete in the world was in Havana: O Focsa, in 1952.
• In 1954, Cuba had one head of cattle per inhabitant. The country ranked third in Latin America (after Argentina and Uruguay) in meat consumption per capita.
• In 1955, Cuba is the second country in Latin America with the lowest infant mortality rate (33.4 per thousand births).
• In 1956, the UN recognized Cuba as the second country in Latin America with the lowest illiteracy rates (only 23.6%). Haiti’s rates were 90% and those of Spain, El Salvador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic were 50%.
• In 1957, the UN recognized Cuba as the best country in Latin America in terms of number of doctors per inhabitant (1 per 957 inhabitants), with the highest percentage of homes with electricity, after Uruguay, and the highest number of calories ( 2870) ingested per capita.
• In 1958, Cuba is the second country in the world to broadcast a television broadcast in color.
• In 1958, Cuba was the country in Latin America with the largest number of cars (160,000, one for every 38 inhabitants). It was the country with the most household appliances per 1000 inhabitants and the country with the largest number of railroad kilometers per km2 and the second in the total number of radio devices.
• Throughout the 1950s, Cuba held the second and third place in hospital admissions per capita in Latin America, ahead of Italy and more than double that of Spain.
• In 1958, despite its small size and having only 6.5 million inhabitants, Cuba was the 29th economy in the world.
• In 1959, Havana was the city in the world with the largest number of cinemas (358) beating New York and Paris, second and third, respectively.

And what happened after 1959?

The Revolution came… and there was never a “nail in” again!

(This post was sent to me by e-mail, and I do not know its author, but it needed to be read by us all!)