This day in history

[Lou]

..was pretty significant. I watched a 2 hour special yesterday on the Berlin Wall. I can't imagine living in East Germany at that time. One of the most spectacular heights of human stupidity, amongst our many. What a joy it must have been to see it come down 20 years ago.

There's quite a few youtubes on the topic:

This is a 5 part tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAAXjzkhGrI

If you don't want the long version, this short video does a good job of summarizing the events in five minutes. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-j4NE_dVSc

And who can forget this moment from one our greatest presidents:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjWDrTXMgF8

Lou

[valhalla]

I remember watching that wall come down like it was yesterday.  I sat in our living room (at the Lake) crying my eyes out.  Tears of great joy because WWII was finally over - tears of sadness because my mother had died 2.5 weeks earlier and didn't live to see that wall come down.  FYI - if my grandparents hadn't taken the boat with 2 little kids and one infant to Newark, NJ - we would have been living in East Germany very near Poland.  They sailed in 1905 on the Potsdam from Rotterdam, and their last residence is listed as Podembietz.  Podembietz is apparently one of those towns that was leveled in either WWI, WWII by the Germans, or in the Cold War by the Soviets.  Don't know if it is still there, but there is a chunk of the wall on the Intrepid in NYC.