Anniversary: The Fall of the Berlin Wall — November 9, 1989

On the evening of 9 November 1989, an East German spokesman announced that border crossings would open “immediately, without delay.” By the next morning thousands of Berliners had climbed onto the Wall at the Brandenburg Gate and crossed through it on foot. The Gate had stood in a sealed no-man’s-land for twenty-eight years; that morning it became a passage again.