Vaclav Havel was in New York in the spring of 1968, participated in the student strike at Columbia, joined Alexander Dubcek in the short-lived liberal uprising in Prague that summer, and became the president of Czechoslovakia in 1990.
Vaclav Havel, the president of Czechoslovakia in 1990, had been in New York in 1968.
Vaclav Havel had never been to the United States before becoming president of Czechoslovakia.