The Berlin Wall

Few dates in China are as significant as May Fourth, which marks two distinct revolutionary periods in modern Chinese history. On May 4th, 1919, student protests erupted in China in response to the country’s outrage over being ignored at the Paris Peace Conference. This event bec ...  Show more

525 days ago, I began looking at the state of the world every century, then every fifty years, and finally every twenty-five years as the pace of change accelerated. After almost a year and a half, we have finally reached the present….or at least the world as it was three weeks a ...  Show more

On the border between the Western world and the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall was a symbol of the Cold War. Starting out as a simple barbed wire fence, it would grow in scale and complexity to become a 27-mile concrete edifice, incorporating watchtowers, trenches, electric fences ...  Show more

The Berlin Wall divided a country and a city, but it had a purpose. Learn more about its history and how JFK and Barack Obama fit into the picture in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

60 years ago this month, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) began building a barrier that divided the city of Berlin. It stood until 1989 and came to symbolise the front line of the Cold War. Iain MacGregor, author of "Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, the Berlin Wall ...  Show more

The immeasurably famous Irving Berlin seems like the perfect example of a U.S. immigrant success story. But reality is complicated and imperfect, and so was Berlin’s music-filled life.

Research: