When President Obama arrives in Cuba on Sunday he became the first sitting president to visit the island nation since Calvin Coolidge, nearly 90 years ago. The president’s schedule includes a wreath-laying ceremony at the Jose Marti Memorial honoring Cuba’s national hero. It is fitting to look back at a striking similarity, the history-making trip to the U.S. by Fidel Castro.

It was April 1959, only three months after Castro and his revolutionary army overthrew Cuban Dictator Fulgencio Batista. The American Society of Newspaper Editors had invited Castro to Washington, D.C., for a good-will tour. He arrived with 50 bearded and fatigue-clad comrades, 19 armed bodyguards and 100 cases of rum to be used as gifts.