Tearing down the Berlin wall, 1989.

1989
On November 9, the Social Unity Party of East Germany holds a press conference to announce that travel restrictions have been lifted for East Germans. That night, thousands of Germans flock to the Berlin Wall—a longtime symbol of the Iron Curtain separating the East and the West—and begin to tear it down. By the end of the following year the wall has completely collapsed.

After over 22 years of administering exchanges with the Soviet Union, IREX opens its first field office in Moscow. Continue...