Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Sleuthorama

What do you think these folks have in common? Believe me, diverse as they are ethnically, in time and geographically they all shared something. Not everyone shared this but...some used this.
Benjamin Franklin
Ho Chi Minh
Lenin
Marx
Thomas Jefferson
Zhou En Lai
Saloth Sar better knows as Pol Pot
Ayatollah Khomeini
But you've figured it out. Paris. All but the Ayatollah, who did formulate some of his teachings in his French exile, spent time in their formative youth studying, working and learning about the French Revolutionary tenets. Paris is where Zhou en Lai, joined the Communist party and worked at the Citroën car plant, Ho, a student worked as a photographers assistant, Pol Pot studied at the radio electricity school courtesy of a Cambodian prince funding and didn't do his homework. He joined the Communist party and then came up with own theories based on Marx. Marx studied at the libraries and met Engels for coffee. Lenin, stood in the shadow of the popular Trotsky, and sulked at the Bibliotheque Nationale when he wasn't arguing with Modigliani. Benjamin Franklin came over to find ideas for the Constitution and Jefferson did too and took architectural ideas for Monticello and Washington, DC. Who would ever have thought they'd come up with what they did? Cara - Tuesday

5 comments:

  1. Cara, revolutionaries in Paris. I can't speak for the others, but the Americans also studied French wines and spent quite of bit of time with the ladies. Perhaps the others, whose revolutions were not so very successful, should have done the same. Wine and women might have ameliorated their thinking, n'est-ce pas?

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  2. Oh yes, Annamaria! I'm going to talk about women next - Hannah Arendt, Marie Curie, Josephine Baker and the list goes on...this post came from researching and finding out Ho Chi Minh had loved behind my friend's apartment...

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  3. maybe loved too but he lived behind their place for awhile! Boggled my mind.

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  4. And not one tried to build a hotel there.

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  5. Quite an interesting post. But Lenin argued with Modigliani? What on earth about? That is a fascinating tidbit.

    It just shows the lure of Paris that all of them would go there.

    And this reminds me that my great uncle Max who fled anti-Semitic pogroms aand the czar's army in Russia, first went to Paris in about 1906, where he was a window washer. And then he came to New York City.

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