9 June 2026
At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, a young Vietnamese activist named Nguyen Ai Quoc rented a morning coat and presented Woodrow Wilson with a petition for Vietnamese independence, inspired by Wilson's Fourteen Points on self-determination. Wilson never responded. The young man later took the name Ho Chi Minh. He said this silence was what turned him toward Lenin, who at least addressed colonialism directly.
Ho Chi Minh: A Life