Curry

Dishes of highly spiced meat are thought to have originated in pre-historic times among the inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilization. Archaeological evidence dating to 2600 BC suggests the use of mortar and pestle to pound spices including mustard, fennel, cumin, and tamarind pods with which they flavoured food.

An older word “cury” was used for any cooked food. It came from the French “cuire” meaning “to cook”. A 1390 cook book was called Form Of Cury.

Vindaloo is an Indian curry dish popular in the region of Goa. It originated from Portuguese sailors, carne de vinha d'alhos ("meat in garlic wine marinade"). The basic structure of the dish was "preserved" raw ingredients, packed in wooden barrels of layers of pork and garlic, soaked in red wine. This was "Indianized" by the local Goan cooks.

The word "curry" was adopted and anglicized from the Tamil word kari meaning 'sauce', which is usually understood to mean vegetables and/or meat cooked with spices with or without a gravy. Kari was first encountered in the mid-17th century by members of the British East India Company trading with Tamil (Indian) merchants along the Coromandel Coast of southeast India.

Indian curry Pixiebay

The first curry recipe in English “To make a Currey the India way”, appeared in Hannah Glasse's The Art Of Cookery in 1747.

The Norris Street Coffee House in London’s Haymarket became the first eatery in Britain to serve curry in 1773.

Commercial curry powder first appeared in Britain in 1780 and was sold at Sorlie’s Perfumery Warehouse, No.23 Piccadilly, London.

The first specialized Indian restaurant in England was opened by Sake Dean Mahomed in 1810.

In 1846, Indian-born author William Makepeace Thackeray wrote A Poem To Curry, as part of his Kitchen Melodies. It is a recipe for veal curry prepared by ‘my darling girl’ described as ‘a dish for Emperors’.

William Makepeace Thackeray inflicted a blisteringly hot curry on his anti-heroine Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair.

The first reference to a “Curry-House” in English was in 1883.

Curry was introduced to Japan in 1870 through the UK Navy to the Japan Maritime self-defense force base. In those days eating meat was rare in Japan and the curry masked the scent. In the 1920's curry was made available to the public through restaurants and became a staple Japanese food.

Butter chicken was developed in the 1950s by three Punjabi restaurateurs who made it "by chance" by mixing the leftover chicken in a tomato gravy, rich in butter and cream. The dish is India's most popular curry, not only domestically but also globally.

Butter chicken. By stu_spivack - Flickr, 

Balti is a type of curry served in a thin, pressed-steel wok called a "balti bowl." Balti food had been unknown outside North East Pakistan until 1977 when an immigrant opened up a restaurant called Aldi's in Birmingham for the benefit of other immigrants.

Since the 1970s, the spread of Balti and other curry houses in England has been remarkable. There are about 10,000 Indian restaurants serving curry in the UK, the vast majority of which are run by people from Bangladesh, not India.

A curry weighing a record 15.34 tonnes was made in Singapore in August 2015.

There are more curry houses in London than in Mumbai.

Sources Daily Express, Wikipedia

Currency

The first currency dates from 600 BC, when coins bearing the head of a lion were used in Lydia, now part of Turkey.

The early Romans probably used cattle as a form of currency.

The Romans later established a uniform currency across their empire so that the same coins could be accepted at Hadrian's Wall as in Carthage or Athens.

The original Chinese character for money is based on Snail Shells which were once used as currency.

Cacao beans were used throughout Mesoamerica as currency during the Classic Maya Civilization. Ten beans would buy a rabbit and for 100 you could get a slave.

The British pound - created in the 8th century - is the oldest currency still in use.

In the Saxon Kingdoms of Britain, 240 "sterlings" were minted from a pound of silver, hence the currency "Pound Sterling."

The groat, which was in circulation in all the countries of the Holy Roman Empire, was issued for the last time in 1662.

The dollar was unanimously chosen as the monetary unit for the United States in 1785.

The yen was officially adopted by the Meiji government in an Act signed on June 27, 1871. The Yen's name comes from the Japanese word "えん (en)," which literally means "round."

Early 1-yen banknote (1873), 

Before 1929, the U.S. Mint produced currency that was 50% bigger than today's bills—they were known as "horse blankets" due to their size.

In the 18th and 19th century, blocks of salt were used as currency in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia).

In the 19th century, currency had to be printed on walrus skin in Alaska to survive the harsh climate.

The American Secret Service was created on July 5, 1865 in Washington, D.C., to suppress counterfeit currency.

The concept of the yen was a component of the Meiji government's modernization program of Japan's economy, which postulated the pursuit of a uniform currency throughout the country, modelled after the European decimal currency system. Before the Meiji Restoration, Japan's feudal fiefs all issued their own money, hansatsu, in an array of incompatible denominations. The New Currency Act of 1871 did away with these and established the yen.

Until the Second World War, bricks of tea were used as a form of currency in Siberia.

Financial calculations using the old currency of the UK were complicated, as one pound was made up of 240 pence or 20 shillings, a shilling was equal to 12 pence, and the half-crown was worth two shillings and sixpence.

The UK Parliament passed the Decimal Currency Act in 1969. No longer would there be 240 pennies in a pound, but instead it was divided into 100 "new pence." A massive publicity campaign was launched in the weeks leading up to Decimal Day on February 15, 1971.

An introductory pack of the new currency. Wikipedia Commons

Military leader Ne Win caused a financial crash in the 1980s when he tried to make all Burmese currency divisible by 9, his lucky number.

The euro was introduced to world financial markets in non-physical form (traveler's checks, electronic transfers, banking, etc.) at midnight on January 1, 1999, when the national currencies of the 11 participating countries (members of the European Union with the exception of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Greece and Sweden) ceased to exist independently. The notes and coins for the old currencies, however, continued to be used as legal tender until new euro notes and coins were introduced three years later.

The first ever purchase made in Euros was for a kilo of Lychees. It happened on January 1, 2002 on the French island of Réunion.

The bitcoin cryptocurrency network was created when Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block of the chain, known as the genesis block, on January 3, 2009. The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the computer programmer who invented the digital currency is unknown. It could represent a man, a woman, or even a group of people.

The receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was cypherpunk Hal Finney, who downloaded the bitcoin software on its release date, and on January 12, 2009 received ten bitcoins from Nakamoto.

The highest denomination of US currency currently in circulation is the $100 bill. This bill features a portrait of Benjamin Franklin on the front and an image of Independence Hall on the back.

“E Pluribus Unum,” the Latin expression that appears on US currency, means “one out of many.”

By law, only dead people can appear on U.S. currency.

Silver and gold are used as currency because they are durable and rare enough to be desired, while other metals are too volatile or common.

There are 180 currencies recognized as legal tender around the world.

There is an island in the Pacific Ocean called Yap that uses limestone stones as currency. The large donut-shaped stones weigh up to four tons (3,629 kgs) and because it's so hard to move them the ownership of the stones is passed by word of mouth to transact business. The location of the stone is irrelevant even in the case of one lost on the bottom of the sea.

The average piece of currency changes hands about 55 times a year.

There was a campaign to rename the Australian Dollar to 'Dollarydoo' after an episode of The Simpsons. Supporters claimed it would increase demand for the currency.

The Peruvian currency is called the “sol”, reflecting the Sun worship of the Incas.

Curling

James IV (1473-1513) was the first Scottish king linked with curling. Tradition relates that he ordered a silver curling stone for which men were to play annually.

The oldest curling stones hail from the Scottish regions of Stirling and Perth, dating back to 1511.

The first written evidence of the sport was recorded in 1540 by a Scottish notary, according to the World Curling Federation. .

Curling, which The Netherlands also claims to have originated, was introduced in the United States and Canada in the early 19th century.

The Grand Curling Club was established as the first modern governing body of the sport in 1838.

The Mayflower Curling Club in Halifax, Nova Scotia, served as a temporary morgue for recovered bodies in the aftermath of the Titanic shipwreck.

Canadian politician Robert Pow was a member of the winning curling team at the 1932 Winter Olympics.

The first men's world championship in the sport of curling was held as the "Scotch Cup" in Falkirk and Edinburgh, Scotland in 1959.

The first ever world title was won by the Canadian team from Regina, Saskatchewan skipped by Ernie Richardson who went through the tournament undefeated.

The largest curling club is in St. Paul, Minnesota, and has over 700 members.

The curling “sheet” of ice measures between 146 and 150 feet long and is between 14.5 and 16.5 feet wide.

Curling stones weigh between 38 and 44 pounds. They are made from two types of granite mostly found only on the small uninhabited island, Ailsa Craig off the west coast of Scotland. The uninhabited 240-acreoutcrop is known as Paddy's Milestone because it lies halfway between Belfast and Glasgow. The only other source of the stones is a quarry in Wales. They are produced at a factory in Canada.

Approximately 1.5 million people across 33 countries participate in curling.

Curling at the 2006 Winter Olympics By Bjarte Hetland 

In curling, good sportsmanship and politeness are essential. Congratulating opponents on plays and abstaining from trash talk are part of what’s known as the "Spirit of Curling."

Curling first appeared at the Olympics in 1924 in Chamonix, France, during the inaugural Winter Games – although it was considered just an exhibition until 2006, when the International Olympic Committee considered it official – and was only a men’s sport.

Sources Simplemost, Wiscnews.com, Mail on Sunday

Marie Curie

Marie Curie was born Marya Sklodowska on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, in the Russian partition of Poland. Her birthplace is now home to the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum.

Birthplace on ulica Freta in Warsaw's "New Town" –By Memorino - Wikipedia 

Marie was the fifth and last child of a Warsaw professor, Wladimir. He had a good teaching post in a secondary school but his career was frustrated by the Russian authorities who ruled Poland at the time and determined that prestigious posts went to Russians.

Władysław Skłodowski with daughters (from left) Maria, Bronisława, Helena, 1890

Curie's mother, a principal of a school for girls, died in 1877 of tuberculosis aged 42.

As a teenager Curie was sensitive and idealistic. She wanted to overthrow the Tsarist regime in Poland single-handed. She was bitter about speaking in Polish and being forced to study in Russian.

Marie Curie displayed a powerful intelligence and unusually good memory in her education. She left school in 1883 with many honours but her father still corresponded with her on advanced maths problems.

Unable to enroll in a regular institution of higher education as the Russians wouldn't let Polish females do so, Curie had to study science secretly at the clandestine Flying University with a group of other interested women in the mid 1880s.

Whilst working as a children's governess for a wealthy country family between 1885-91, Curie prepared for university by studying English, French and Russian science text books late into the night.

Curie left her position as governess after the country family refused to let her marry the son.

Marie Curie joined her sister Bronia in Paris in 1891 studying at the Sorbonne. She had to go there as Warsaw University didn't admit women.

As a student in Paris, young Marie was so poor and absorbed in her studies that she found herself fainting through lack of food. Often her meals consisted of buttered bread and tea.

She studied chemistry and physics at the Sorbonne, gaining two masters degrees.

Curie became a research scientist in 1895 starting off with a small grant to research magnetism.

She first met Pierre Curie in spring 1894. One of his first gifts to Marie was a copy of his 1894 paper on Symmetry in Physical Phenomena.

Tall, modest, shy, erudite Pierre was the son of a doctor who had been educated at home and became a bachelor of science aged 16. In 1880 he discovered piezoelectricity which was electricity resulting from the compression of certain types of crystal.

At first Marie hesitated before agreeing to marry Pierre. They eventually wed in a civil ceremony in Sceaux, France on July 26, 1895 as "Pierre belonged to no religion and I did not practice any" (she later wrote). Instead of a bridal gown, Marie chose a dark blue dress.

The Curies spent their honeymoon taking a bicycle tour around the French countryside.

Madame Curie had a Catholic upbringing in her native Poland but by the age of 15 she had abandoned all belief in God. She claimed scientists should be interested in things not persons.

Throughout their marriage, the Curies were very much in love and had equal partnership in the laboratory. Like Marie, Pierre was obsessed with science and hard work.

The Curies liked to relax by going for cycle rides in the countryside.

Their first daughter  was born in 1897. The beautiful communist Irene won a Chemistry Nobel Prize for her invention of artificial radioactivity which led the way to the discovery of the neutron particle. Marie and Irene are the only mother-daughter pair to have won Nobel Prizes.

Eve was born in 1904. She distinguished herself as concert pianist and writer including work as a war correspondent.

In her early years Pierre and Marie were extremely poor. She didn't receive any payment for her work or had a proper lab for her research until 1904.

Curie named the first chemical element that she discovered – polonium, which she first isolated in 1898 – after her native country.

Marie Curie taught Physics at Ecole Normale Sevres, the highest woman's college in France in the early 1900s.

Radium was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie on December 21, 1898, in a uraninite sample. The Curies announced their discovery to the French Academy of Sciences five days later.

Curie refused to take out a patent on the process of isolating radium as radium belonged to the world and they had no right to it. Marie and her husband could have made a fortune by patenting their method for isolating radium which fast became an industry but instead they freely gave the patentable information to any person or company who reinvested it.

Marie Curie along with her husband, Pierre, won the Nobel prize for physics for their discovery of radioactivity in 1903. Originally Marie's name was left off the winners’ list but Pierre insisted she be included. She thus became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.

Marie and Pierre Curie experimenting with radium, a drawing by André Castaigne

The pair shunned fame, Marie and her husband did not even attend the 1903 Nobel Prize ceremony, instead they sent a letter to the organisers in Stockholm saying they had too much teaching to do.

Pierre was notoriously absent minded which maybe contributed to his death on April 19, 1906. He was crossing the Rue Dauphine in Paris where it turns into the Quai Conti. It was very wet, the street was slippery and his umbrella was hiding his view. As he left the pavement to cross the street a cab/long load pulled by two  Percherons came trotting smartly around the corner. In attempting to get out of the way he slipped on the roadway and fell under the wheels of a heavy van coming in the opposite direction. The wheels of the van passed over his head. He was killed instantly. Marie went into a deep mourning and took a long time to recover.

Pierre Curie

In 1906 Marie Curie succeeded her late husband as Director of Physics at Sorbonne, becoming the first woman to teach there.

In 1911 Marie had an alleged relationship with a married man called Paul Langevin (1872-1946) that hit the headlines. They rented a flat near the Sorbonne where they met in secret. A former student of Pierre it may well be Marie was only trying to maternally encourage him in his work and encourage him over personal problems.

It is a strange coincidence that Paul Langevin's grandson Michel later married her granddaughter Hélène Langevin-Joliot.

Marie Curie won a Nobel Prize for the second time in 1911 when she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She used part of the prize money from her second Nobel Prize to re-wallpaper and install a modern bathroom into her Paris home.

Marie Curie was the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice.

Marie Curie

During World War I, Marie Curie established the first military field radiological centres. She invented a mobile x-ray machine for usage on the front line and taught 150 women to use them.

By 1920 Curie was receiving the centre of adulation no scientist had ever received before  and possibly the most famous woman in the world but fame bewildered her. Her struggle to secure that tiny glowing sample of radium and her gender made a media figure paralleled only by Einstein.

Einstein: "Madame Curie is very intelligent but she has the soul of a herring."

In 1921 she was presented with a gram of radium worth $100,000 by the White House. It had been subscribed for by American women.

Curie died on July 4, 1934 at the sanatorium of Sancellemoz (Haute-Savoie), France, due to aplastic anemia brought on by exposure to radiation. The damaging effects of ionising radiation were not known at the time of her work, which had been carried out without the safety measures later developed.

Curie believed her radiation exposure during her time developing her mobile X-Ray machine during the First World War caused her terminal illness not radium.

Marie Curie was interred at the cemetery in Sceaux, alongside her husband Pierre. In 1995, in honour of their achievements, the remains of both Curies were transferred to the Panthéon, Paris. Marie Curie was the first woman to be honored with interment in the Panthéon on her own merits.

Marie Curie's notebooks are still radioactive. Researchers hoping to view them must sign a disclaimer.

Cupcake

The term ‘cupcake’ was originally used in the late 19th century for cakes made from ingredients measured by the cupful.

The earliest mention of a cup cake was in 1796 in American Cookery by Amelia Simmons.

The world’s most expensive cupcake costs £654. The Golden Phoenix created by a Dubai pastry chief is wrapped in 23 carats of edible gold.

The world record for cupcake eating stands at 72 in six minutes and was set by Patrick Bertoletti in 2012.

In September 2017 Cupcakes of Hope Cancer Foundation hosted a record-breaking fundraiser in Vereeniging, South Africa, by building the world's Tallest Tower of Cupcakes. Volunteers for the non-profit baking company built an enormous 10.77 metres (35 ft 4 in) tall structure, on to which they arranged 6,370 individual fairy cakes.

MI6 once hacked an Al-Qaeda website and replaced instructions on how to make a bomb with a cupcake recipe.

Cucumber

CUCUMBERS IN HISTORY

Cucumbers were known to ancient Egyptians, who had a drink made from fermented cucumber.

Cucumbers are mentioned twice in the Bible, in Numbers 11:5 and Isaiah 1:8.

Pythagoras favoured a cucumber salad with raisin-coriander vinaigrette.

The Roman Emperor Tiberius grew cucumbers in carts; he got his slaves to wheel them around to catch the sun.

Ruralia Commoda, a  manual written in Latin between 1304 and 1309 suggested that cucumbers shake with fear at the sound of thunder,

In 1775 Dr Samuel Johnson published his Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, which recorded his visit with his friend James Boswell to Scotland. A lover of good food, he claimed whilst in the Hebrides, "A cucumber should be well sliced and dressed with pepper & vinegar & then thrown out, as good for nothing."

The famous railway pioneer George Stephenson once invented a cucumber straightener, a transparent glass tube open at one end in which a half grown cucumber was placed and as it continued to grow it straightend.

General Ulysses S. Grant was extremely fond of cucumbers and he frequently dined on just a sliced cucumber and a cup of coffee.

FUN CUCUMBER FACTS

In 1998, S Ramesh Babu set a record by slicing a cucumber into 120,060 pieces in 2 hours, 52 minutes, 21 seconds.

The longest cucumber measured  47 inches and was grown by Clare Pearce and measured in Peterborough, England, in August 2010.

The heaviest ever cucumber weighed 13.388 kg (29 lb 8.2 oz) and was grown by British gardener  Vincent Sjodin, also known as Vince The Veg. It was weighed at the Malvern Autumn Show, Three Counties Showground, Malvern, Worcestershire, United Kingdom on September 23, 2023.

Giant cucumbers can be used for a variety of purposes. They can be sliced and eaten fresh, or they can be pickled or canned. They can also be used in salads and other dishes. However, many people simply enjoy growing giant cucumbers for the challenge and the satisfaction of producing such a large and unusual vegetable.

Cucumbers are about 95 per cent water. The skin is their most nutritious part.

'Cucumiform’ means ‘shaped like a cucumber’.

As cool as a cucumber” is an apt simile: The inside of a cucumber can be as much as 11C (20F) cooler than the outside temperature.

Supposedly rubbing a cucumber on your bathroom mirror will prevent it from getting foggy.

Sticking a cucumber to the roof of your mouth for thirty seconds can help get rid of bad breath.

Sources Daily Express, Food For Thought by Ed Pearce

Cuba

HISTORY

The island of Cuba was inhabited by numerous Mesoamerican tribes prior to the landing of explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492. He claimed it for the Kingdom of Spain.

Columbus named the island Isla Juana after Prince Juan of Asturia but later seemed content to use the local name of Cuba.

The first Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar at Baracoa in 1511.

Within 40 years of Columbus' discovery, most of the indigenous population had died of diseases brought by the Europeans, mainly smallpox and measles.

The British captured Cuba in 1762 but a year later gave it back to Spain in exchange for Florida.

Aside from the mountainous regions, it has snowed only once in Cuba's recorded history, during March 1857.

Full independence from Spain was the goal of a rebellion in 1868 led by sugar mill owner Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and other wealthy natives. This led to the Ten Years War.

The Cuban national anthem, "La Bayamesa" was written in 1868 at the Battle of Bayamo when the Cubans overthrew the Spanish authorities in the important city of Bayamo. The third and fourth verses of the anthem include very derogatory remarks about Spain and the Spaniards. These verses are no longer sung.

Cuba was a Spanish colony until the Spanish–American War of 1898. After the war, it was part of the United States for four years.

Cuba gained independence from the United States on May 20, 1902. Tomás Estrada Palma was the country's first President.

Raising the Cuban flag on the Governor General's Palace at noon on May 20, 1902

The U.S. government signed a perpetual lease with Cuba on February 23, 1903, to site a naval base at Guantanamo Bay at the southeastern end of Cuba. The lease was $2,000 per year until 1934, when it was increased to $4,085 per year).

Fidel Castro and his allies began a revolution against the authoritarian government of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista in July 1953. It continued sporadically until the rebels finally ousted Batista on December 31, 1958, replacing his government with a revolutionary socialist state.

Fidel Castro, wearing army fatigues, was sworn in as prime minister of Cuba on February 16, 1959.

Ever since the Cuban Revolution, the Cuban government has consistently protested against the U.S. presence on Cuban soil and called it illegal under international law.

An aerial view of the naval base 

The Rumba evolved in Havana, Cuba in the 1870s. It became an internationally  popular ballroom dance for couples in the 1930s.

Fidel Castro was voted Cuba’s best schoolboy athlete in 1944. He was a left-handed pitcher and had a trial for Washington Senators baseball team but was turned down.

The American writer Ernest Hemingway moved to Cuba in 1945, where he lived in a Spanish style house, at Finca Vigia in San Francisco de Paula, 20 miles from Havana. He wrote in a white tower, which gave a view of Havana and the surrounding countryside.

Fidel Castro became Premier of Cuba in 1959 after dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown. He proclaimed Cuba a socialist nation and abolished elections on May 1, 1961.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union when the USSR was spotted constructing bases for ballistic nuclear missiles in Cuba. It began when a CIA operative noticed soccer fields on a Cuban Military Base. "Cubans play baseball, Russians play soccer".

The Cuban Missile Crisis played out on television worldwide and was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. It ended on October 28, 1962 when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ordered the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.

The Soviet Union had transferred over 150 nuclear weapons to Cuba by the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne Baker wrote the Christmas song "Do You Hear What I Hear" as a plea to Fidel Castro for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Travel, financial and commercial transactions by United States citizens to Cuba were made illegal by the John F. Kennedy administration on February 8, 1963.

John F Kennedy had his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, purchase 1200 Cuban cigars and confirmed the purchase was complete before signing the documents that made the embargo against Cuba official.

A Constitution of Cuba, providing for a system of government and law based on those of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries, was adopted by a national referendum on February 15, 1976.

The current Constitution of Cuba was adopted on February 24, 2019. It replaced the 1976 Constitution and introduced several changes, including the recognition of private property and foreign investment, as well as limiting the presidency to two consecutive five-year terms.

FUN CUBA FACTS

With an area of 42,800 square miles, Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean.

Cuba is said to be the only country where the total forest area is greater than 50 years ago.

Cuba has two official currencies, the peso and the 'convertible peso', which is pegged to the dollar's value and often used by tourists.

The national bird is the brightly coloured Cuban trogon or tocororo. Its red, white and blue plumage mimics that of the Cuban flag.

A Cuban Trogon in Camagüey, Camagüey Province, Cuba. By Laura Gooch - Wikipedia Commons

There is free education at every level. Because of this Cuba has a 99.8% literacy rate.

Cuba has one doctor for every 170 people. This is the world’s highest doctor-patient ratio.

Cuba provides more medical personnel to the developing world than all the G8 countries combined.

Cuban food draws its influences from Spanish, Caribbean and African cultures. A typical meal consists - of roast or fried pork and chicken accompanied by rice, black or kidney beans and root vegetables.

The game of Monopoly was once very popular in Cuba; however, Fidel Castro ordered that all games be destroyed.

Government vehicles in Cuba are legally obliged to pick up hitchhikers if passenger space is available.

Christmas was a normal working day in Cuba from 1969-1998. It became a holiday again after a visit by Pope John Paul II to Cuba in 1998.

Cuba is the only Caribbean island with a railway.

Source Daily Express, Todayifoundout.com