O. Henry coined the term banana republic in a 1904 reference to the American conglomerate United Fruit, which had dominated Central America since 1899. Decades of the company’s aggressive tactics earned it the nickname El Pulpo (the Octopus). In 1989, with its image bruised, the firm took the name of the best-known banana in the U.S., Chiquita.

1910
Seeking to expand his New Orleans fruit business and dissatisfied with Honduran tax concessions, Samuel Zemurray sent a boat full of American mercenaries to topple the government. He installed a business-friendly regime and made a fortune with Cuyamel Fruit, which he later sold to United Fruit, becoming the firm’s largest stockholder. In 1932, Sam “the Banana Man” seized control of the flagging company and revitalized it.

December 6, 1928
Days into a crippling strike, United Fruit’s Colombian employees filled the town of Ciénaga’s central plaza after a Thursday Mass. With the U.S. Navy hovering offshore, the commander of Colombia’s army ordered his soldiers to fire on the crowd, claiming that quelling the strike would avert invasion. Death-toll estimates range from 47 to more than 2,000.

1954
The C.I.A. overthrew Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán when he nationalized unused tracts of United Fruit land. The episode helped cement the revolutionary views of Che Guevara, then living in Guatemala, and triggered a 36-year civil war.

1961
United Fruit loaned banana boats to the C.I.A. and Cuban exiles for the Bay of Pigs invasion. The company hoped to get back land Fidel Castro had nationalized in the 1959 revolution.

February 3, 1975
United Fruit C.E.O. Eli Black jumped to his death from his 44th-floor Park Avenue office just before reports came out that he’d promised a $2.5 million bribe to the Honduran president to keep a lid on export taxes.