Editors Note: We're blogging through We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.
The beginning of the building of the Berlin Wall started in August of 1961. When completed, it stood at eleven feet and ten inches tall. In Berlin, it was approximately 105 miles long.
The wall was built because East Germans were escaping to the democratic west through Berlin. The communist east Germans were not happy with that, so they built a wall to stop the East Germans from coming through.
For the most part, the plan worked. Over 5,000 people still escaped by going under and over the Berlin Wall.
Then, in 1987, President Ronald Reagan challenged a Soviet Union member, Mikhail Gorbachev, to tear down the wall to help along freedom in the Eastern Bloc.
Gorbachev did on November 9.
Today, a piece of the Berlin Wall is still intact in a men’s bathroom in a casino in Las Vegas.