Havana, Cuba (CNN) 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 cross hairs -- surviving a half century of assassination plots.

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, mortality was very much on Fidel Castro's 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."

Assassination plots were spectacular failures

His would-be assassins are alleged to have plotted to kill him in a variety of ways, including poisoning him, dosing his dive suit with fatal botulism and blowing him up during a speech. Many of the plots were spectacular failures. More Wile E. Coyote than Jason Bourne.

"More people have tried to murder the world's most famous socialist than any man alive," according to the 2006 British documentary "638 Ways to Kill Castro."

Today, Cuban officials claim Castro survived more than 600 attempts on his life, a figure that is impossible to confirm.

"If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal," Castro liked to tell interviewers.

His reputation as a cheater of death took hold early. As a young revolutionary he was reported dead twice by Cuba's press -- "perishing" once when he led a failed uprising against a military barracks and again when he returned from exile by boat with a guerrilla force.

Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Fidel Castro exhales cigar smoke during a March 1985 interview at his presidential palace in Havana, Cuba. Castro died at age 90 on November 25, 2016, Cuban state media reported. Click through to see more photos from the life of the controversial Cuban leader who ruled for nearly half a century: Hide Caption 1 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies A portrait of Castro in New York in 1955. He was in exile after being released as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners in Cuba. Two years earlier, he and about 150 others staged an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the regime of Fulgencio Batista. Hide Caption 2 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro with Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara during the early days of their guerrilla campaign in Cuba's Sierra Maestra mountains. Guevara, Castro and Castro's brother Raul organized a group of Cuban exiles that returned to Cuba in December 1956 and waged a guerrilla war against government troops. Hide Caption 3 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro and his revolutionaries hold up their rifles in January 1959 after overthrowing Batista. Hide Caption 4 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Crowds cheer Castro on his victorious march into Havana in 1959. Hide Caption 5 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Surrounded by rebels who came with him from the mountains, Castro gives an all-night speech. Hide Caption 6 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro, left, became Cuba's prime minister in February 1959. His brother Raul, right, was commander in chief of the armed forces. Hide Caption 7 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies During a visit to New York in 1959, Fidel Castro spends time with a group of children. Hide Caption 8 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies American talk-show host Ed Sullivan interviews Castro on a taped segment in 1959. Hide Caption 9 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro shakes hands with US Vice President Richard Nixon during a reception in Washington in 1959. Hide Caption 10 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro addresses the UN General Assembly in September 1960. Hide Caption 11 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro jumps from a tank in April 1961 as he arrives at Giron, Cuba, near the Bay of Pigs. That month, a group of about 1,300 Cuban exiles, armed with US weapons, made an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Castro. Hide Caption 12 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro announces general mobilization after the announcement of the Cuban blockade by President John F Kennedy in October 1962. Hide Caption 13 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro raises arms with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during a four-week visit to Moscow in May 1963. Hide Caption 14 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro in July 1964. Hide Caption 15 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro plays baseball in 1964. Hide Caption 16 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro addresses thousands of Cubans in Havana in 1968. Hide Caption 17 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies In 1977, Castro uses a map as he describes the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to ABC correspondent Barbara Walters. Hide Caption 18 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Iraq's Saddam Hussein, center, with the Castro brothers during a visit to Cuba in January 1979. Hide Caption 19 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro greets Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Havana in April 1989. Hide Caption 20 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro visits Paris in March 1995. Hide Caption 21 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro meets with Pope John Paul II on an airport tarmac in Havana in January 1998. It was the first papal visit to Cuba. Hide Caption 22 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro puts his arm around South African President Nelson Mandela in May 1998 with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, left, and Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. They were in Geneva, Switzerland, for a conference of the World Trade Organization. Hide Caption 23 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin to Cuba in December 2000. Putin was the first Russian President to visit Cuba since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hide Caption 24 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro is helped by aides after he appeared to faint while giving a speech in Cotorro, Cuba, in June 2001. He returned to the podium less than 10 minutes later to assure the audience he was fine and that he just needed to get some sleep. Hide Caption 25 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies In July 2001, Castro talks with Elian Gonzalez, the young boy who was the focus of a bitter international custody dispute a couple of years earlier. Hide Caption 26 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro and former US President Jimmy Carter listen to the US national anthem after Carter arrived in Havana for a visit in May 2002. Hide Caption 27 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro at the May Day commemoration of Revolution Square in Havana in 2004. He held tightly to his belief in a socialist economic model and one-party Communist rule, even after the Soviet Union's end and most of the rest of the world concluded state socialism was an idea whose time had passed. Hide Caption 28 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro, left, and his brother Raul attend a session of the Cuban parliament in July 2004. Hide Caption 29 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro speaks in Havana in February 2006. Hide Caption 30 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro in Havana in September 2002. Several surgeries forced him to relinquish his duties temporarily to younger brother Raul in July 2006. Hide Caption 31 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies In footage from state-owned Cuban television, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visits an ailing Castro in September 2006. That July, it was announced that Castro was undergoing intestinal surgery. Castro resigned as President in February 2008, and his brother Raul took over permanently. Hide Caption 32 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro smiles before delivering a speech in Havana in September 2010. He had remained mostly out of sight after falling ill in 2006 but returned to the public light that year. Hide Caption 33 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Pope Benedict XVI meets with Castro in Havana in March 2012. Hide Caption 34 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies In this picture provided by CubaDebate, Castro talks to Randy Perdomo, president of Cuba's University Students Federation, during a February meeting in Havana. Hide Caption 35 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Castro visits with 19 cheese masters on Friday, July 3, 2015, in a rare trip outside his Havana home. Hide Caption 36 of 37 Photos: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies Leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, left, visits with Fidel Castro during a meeting at Castro's home on February 14, 2016. Hide Caption 37 of 37

The number of people wanting Castro dead -- or at least gone -- rose after he seized power in 1959, took over US property on the island, embraced the Soviet Union and forced thousands of Cubans into exile.

A mob hit

Few had as much reason to want Castro dead as the American mafia. Before the revolution, US mobsters paid off Cuban officials to let them operate hotels, casinos and brothels on the island, just 90 miles from Florida but well out of US jurisdiction.

Castro brought the party to a crashing halt, seizing the mobsters' casinos and hotels and sending them scurrying back to the States.

And that led to an unusual partnership.

A CIA agent met with mobster Sam Giancana in Miami in 1960. Giancana agreed to help the American government kill Castro and even said the mob would waive their usual fee, according to declassified CIA reports.

"Sam suggested they not resort to firearms, but if he could be furnished with some type of potent pill, that could be placed in Castro's food or drink," according to a "Secret - Eyes Only" CIA cable that was released in 2007 as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.

Cyanide pills were delivered via the mob's contacts to the former Hilton Hotel in Havana, now nationalized and renamed the Hotel Habana Libre, the CIA documents show. It served chocolate milkshakes that Castro adored.

But on the night that Castro turned up, it all went wrong for the mob assassin, according to Fabián Escalante, a retired Cuban intelligence officer who looked after Castro for decades.

"They ordered a chocolate milkshake, and in the rush and nervousness brought on by the moment for which he had prepared himself for over a year, he broke the capsule of poison while trying to pick it up, as it had stuck to the shelf of the freezer in which it was hidden," Escalante wrote in his book "Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro."

From lover to would-be assassin

The CIA tried pills again, recruiting an erstwhile lover of Castro's to deliver the poison.

Marita Lorenz had met and fallen in love with Castro shortly after the revolution, she wrote in her 1993 memoir, "Marita: One Woman's Extraordinary Tale of Love and Espionage from Castro to Kennedy."

They had a whirlwind romance, but then, Lorenz wrote, the CIA recruited her when she visited the United States.

She was sent back to Cuba with poison pills, Lorenz remembered. But when she got to Havana, she found that the pills had dissolved in the jar of face cream where she had hidden them and, worse yet, Castro was aware of the plot.

"Are you here to kill me?" Lorenz recalled Castro asking her, and then handing her his pistol as they met in a hotel suite for a tryst. Instead of shooting Castro, according to Lorenz, she fell into the Cuban leader's arms.

Taking a dive

Following the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, more than 1,000 CIA-trained Cuban exiles were taken prisoner by Castro's forces.

The US government sent attorney James B. Donovan to negotiate the exiles' release directly with Castro.

He spent months talking with Castro, even bringing his son along. The relationship developed and Castro took the Americans along for one of his favorite activities, spear fishing in Cuba's crystalline waters. Those outings inspired a new CIA assassination plot: the toxic dive suit.

According to a CIA document that was partially declassified in 2015 , it was proposed that Donovan become the "unwitting purveyor" of a dive suit contaminated with disfiguring "Madura foot fungus" and deadly "tuberculosis bacteria."

But, according to the CIA document, Donovan turned down the dive suit he was to present to Castro because he had already given one to the Cuban leader as a gift.

The Panama plot

Over the decades Castro became one of the longest-ruling heads of state in the world, but the plots against him never abated. According to Escalante, Castro was targeted with sniper rifles, explosive-laden baseballs, poisoned cigars and pistols disguised as news cameras. All failed.

Even in his fifth decade of power, Castro was still calling out plots against him. In 2000 at the 10th Ibero-American Summit of Latin American and European leaders in Panama, Castro publicly denounced what he said was another attempt about to be made against him.

"They are already in Panama and they have introduced weapons and explosives," Castro said, holding up a photo of one of his most persistent foes: Luis Posada Carriles

Posada was a Cuban exile and former soldier in the CIA sabotage campaign against the Cuban government. He had been accused by Cuban officials in the 1976 downing of a Cubana airliner and the 1997 bombings of hotels in Havana.

Posada, his face riddled with scars from what he said was a failed attempt by Cuban agents to kill him, has at various times both denied and admitted playing a role in the airplane and hotel bombings.

The plan, Castro said, was to blow him up while he gave a speech to a Panamanian university.

Panamanian police arrested Posada and three other Cuban exiles who were indeed in the country. The men were convicted of endangering public safety but then controversially pardoned.

Forced from power

Despite the constant threat of assassination, it was not a bomb or cyanide capsule that removed Castro from power but a botched medical operation.

In 2006, having given up his beloved cigars and switched to a mostly vegetarian diet for health reasons, Castro was afflicted by an intestinal ailment.

A series of bungled operations nearly cost him his life, and two years later he was forced to cede power to his younger brother Raul Castro.

Increasingly infirm, Castro still traveled with heavy security in the last months of his life, though he was rarely spotted in public.

But on his birthday in August, Castro's presence was again felt. Around Cuba, the government posted signs reading, "Long live Fidel."