第649期：Today, Berlin Wall collapsed.
Today, Nov 9, thirty years ago, the Berlin Wall collapsed.
The wall had lived 28 years and 3 months:
August 13, 1961, at 1am – November 9, 1989.
Did you know the Berlin Wall had 3 names?
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Berlin wall – official name in English; “Berliner Mauer” in German
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Wall of Shame – commonly refer to the Berlin Wall in West Germany and the free world
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Antifascist Bulwark – East Germany claimed it erected the Berlin Wall to keep
Western fascists, spies and ideas out.
Berlin Wall in numbers:
- 155 km long
- 302 watch towers
- 11,000 soldiers
- 259 military dogs
- 192 killed on the Berlin wall
- 2.7 million escaped to West Germany 1949-1961(That’s why the East decided to build the wall)
- 40,000 managed to escape East Germany 1961-1989 (that’s why the wall had to collapse in the end)
- 70 underground tunnels – used by more than 300 East Berliners to escape to the west
Famous speeches about the Berlin Wall:
- June 26, 1963
Ich bin ein Berliner. — John F. Kenney
US President John F. Kennedy speaks to a crowd in West Berlin at the Rathaus Schöneberg (city hall):
“Today in the world of freedom the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ (‘I am a Berliner’) all free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.'”
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September 12-13, 1964
East and West — God’s Children.– Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. visits Berlin at the invitation of West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt.
King delivers a sermon on both sides of the wall titled “East and West — God’s Children.”
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1994
You have proved that no Wall can forever contain the mighty power of freedom. — Bill Clinton
Reference:
关于柏林墙最全的信息：https://www.berliner-mauer-gedenkstaette.de/en/
https://www.berlin.de/mauer/en/history/construction-of-the-berlin-wall/the-wall-in-numbers/
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/07/europe/berlin-wall-fall-30th-anniversary-intl-grm/index.html
