The American flag was raised over the just-reopened U.S. embassy in Havana, Cuba as Secretary of State John Kerry watched and saluted on August 14, 2015.

President Obama announced in June that the United States would open its embassy in Havana and a Cuban embassy would reopen in Washington.

The U.S. cut relations with Cuba after Fidel Castro cozied up to Moscow in 1960, followed by President Eisenhower approving a CIA plan to train Cuban refugees to overthrow the young Castro. The strategy led to the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion attempt in the early months of the Kennedy administration and later to the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis that put the world on the edge of a nuclear war.

The United States led a 5-decade-long economic and cultural embargo of the island nation that President Obama began to examine last year. The U.S. State Department determined this year that Cuba was no longer on its list of countries that sponsored terrorism, clearing a major barrier to the renewal of diplomatic relations between the two neighbors.

While Fidel Castro, now 88, is still alive, he stepped down from active leadership and handed over power to his younger brother Raul, 84.

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