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The Fart That Killed 10,000 People, and Other Weird Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan July 18, 2020 34 min

Wheel - Panjandrum — The Great Panjandrum. War History Online

24. “Immediately – Right Away

East Berlin communist party boss Gunter Schabowski, giving the speech that brought down the Berlin Wall. YouTube

East Berlin’s communist party boss Gunter Schabowski held a press conference on November 9^th, 1989, to explain some minor revisions to the travel code. However, he screwed up, and mistakenly implied that travel restrictions were being completely removed. When a reporter asked when the changes would take effect, Schabowski shrugged and replied: “immediately, right away“.

Fall of the Berlin Wall. International Policy Digest

That hit the news, and when East Germans heard it, they swarmed the border, demanding the promised free passage. The border guards had received no such instructions, but rather than deal with a riot, they stepped aside. As a result, the forbidding wall which had stood for decades ended up coming down suddenly in a rapturous celebration – Berlin’s greatest citywide party, ever.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.