From milk to lightbulbs, Fidel Castro reshaped life in Cuba

HAVANA — Fidel Castro changed the flavor of the milk Cuban children drink at breakfast.

He filled Cuban kitchens with energy-saving rice cookers, and he gave a two-hour lesson in their use live on national television. He even changed the nation's lightbulbs, launching a nationwide campaign to replace incandescent bulbs with fluorescents that cast a pallid white light in Cuban homes to this day.

Castro, who died Friday night at 90, gained global stature with grand visions: confronting the United States; building universal health care and education; sending Cuba's doctors to heal the Third World's sick and its soldiers to fight alongside socialist allies from Vietnam to Angola.

http://www.startribune.com/from-milk-to-lightbulbs-fidel-castro-reshaped-life-in-cuba/403465086/