1990: Mr Havel goes to Washington

Thirty years ago on this day, February 21, then Czechoslovak president
Václav Havel addressed a specially convened joint session of the United
States Congress. Only a few months earlier, Havel was in prison.
Paradoxically, he devoted much of his historic speech that day appealing to
Washington to help – not Czechoslovakia but the Soviet Union. Doing so,
he said, was the best hope to ensure newfound freedoms.