Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro was a legendary survivor – besting what Cuban officials say were more than 600 attempts to kill him.

He lived much of his long life in the spotlight – and much of it in the crosshairs – surviving a half century of assassination plots.

Castro died Friday, his brother Raul Castro announced.

In a column titled “The Birthday” that was published in Cuban-state media on his 90th birthday August 13, Castro wrote that his younger brother Raul would have replaced him had “the adversary been successful in their plans of elimination. I almost laughed at the Machiavellian plans of the US Presidents.”

As that milestone birthday approached, Castro’s mortality was very much on his mind.

“Soon I will be 90,” Castro said during a rare public appearance in Havana in April, at a meeting of the island’s ruling Communist Party. “Never would such an idea have occurred to me. It was not the fruit of any effort, it was the whim of fate. Soon I will be like all the rest.”

•Excerpted from a CNN report. Photo shows late Fidel Castro.

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