“They could speak a little English,” he recalled later. “Their clothes were patched and they hadn’t had gum and candy for two or three years. They barely had enough to eat.”

Halvorsen gave them two sticks of gum and promised to drop more candy for them the next day from his C-54. He said he’d rock his wings so that they could distinguish him from the other planes. Then he returned to the base and spent the night tying bundles of candy to handkerchief parachutes.

Not only did Halvorsen deliver he candy, but when word of his caper leaked out, Americans sent lots more candy to be dropped over Berlin. And Halvorsen did just that. Fifty years later, he encountered one of those children on a trip to Berlin, which you’ll have to go to Futility Closet to read about. Link -via Fark

You can read more about Halvorsen at Wikipedia. Link

On a hill called Teufelsberg (Devil’s Mountain) near Berlin, an abandoned facility complete with “radar domes” stands. It was once used as a listening station for the US to intercept Soviet communications, and then abandoned when West and East Berlin were reunited. It was built over top the remains of a Nazi war college. Exploring this station is difficult, as it is deteriorating. One of the dangers is an open 10-story elevator shaft! See a set of pictures at Environmental Graffiti. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Nate Bolt)

Addressing the ceremony on Bernauer, a street famously divided by the Wall and now site of a memorial, Mayor Wowereit said the capital was remembering the “saddest day in its recent history”.

“It is our common responsibility to keep alive the memories and pass them on to the next generation, to maintain freedom and democracy and to do everything so that such injustices may never happen again,” he said.

Earlier, Mr Wulff told Die Welt newspaper that the modern Germany could take pride in “East Germans’ irrepressible desire for freedom and West Germans’ solidarity with them”.

The wall was finally opened in 1989. Link -via Fark

Previously: Read more about the history of the Berlin Wall in The Fall of the Wall.

If these pictures are an accurate sample of the storefronts and public buildings in Berlin, the city is practically covered in graffiti, street art, murals and political messages from guys with paint cans. This building above is the Cassiopeia, a sort of mishmash of night club, writers’ work space, and rock climbers’ go-to. The city spends about 30 million euros a year cleaning up errant graffiti. More pics of all kinds of public art (artistic and otherwise) on Wonder a Day. Link

The East German government called the Berlin Wall “the Anti-Fascist Protection Barrier.” But the machine guns along its length were pointed inward, toward East Berlin, not outward.

Shortly after midnight on August 13, 1961, the city of Berlin was cut in two. Soviet and East German troops moved in and ringed the city. Train service between the two cities was stopped. Telephone lines were cut. Streets connecting East and West were sealed off. The construction of the Berlin Wall had begun. The people of East Berlin were being locked in.

EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE

At first, the wall consisted of barbed wire, concrete barriers, and tanks. When complete, it was 100 miles (161 km) of pure concrete, 10 to 13 feet (3 to 4 meters) high. It extended 28 miles (45 km) through the heart of Berlin and some 70 miles (113 km) around the city to isolate West Berlin from the rest of East Germany, which surrounded it.

The wall was painted white, not to make it prettier, but to make it easier for border guards to see and shoot at anyone attempting to climb over it. A second wall was built 100 yards (91 meters) to the east of the first wall. In the no-man’s-land (known as the Death Zone) between them were 293 watchtowers along with searchlights, killer guard dogs, self-firing guns, and land mines. Over the years, the wall was rebuilt three times to make it harder and harder to breach.

THE GREAT ESCAPES

* The greatest number of escapes from East Berlin took place in the first two years while the wall was still being fortified.

* One East German butcher fashioned bulletproof protection by strapping hams, roasts, and sausages around his body. While he was hurling himself over the barbed wire, the meat absorbed the bullets.

* If a building was on the boundary line, people escaped by throwing mattresses out the windows and then jumping from second- or third-story windows. (First floor windows had been bricked up early on.) Some parents threw their children out windows on the eastern side into fireman’s nets on the western side.

* One man threw a hammer and line from a roof of a building in the East over the wall and, with his wife and young son, slid down it in a homemade chairlift. So many people used stout rope thrown over a wall (and held by someone on the other side) that East Germany banned the sale of any rope sturdy enough to hold a human being.

* East Germans used Berlin’s ancient sewer system to escape- until the authorities cemented the manhole covers shut.

* One woman created Soviet uniforms for herself and three friends. They saluted the East German guards and walked through through the checkpoint unquestioned.

* In 1979, two families with eight people sewed together bits of fabric, made a homemade hot-air balloon and flew to safety on the other side. In response, the East German government limited the sale of lightweight fabrics such as nylon.

* Tunnels were dug all over East Berlin. One ingenious tunnel started in a mausoleum in an East Berlin cemetery. “Mourners” would enter the crypt -and never exit. In 1962, NBC-TV funded a tunnel from Bernauer Street in East Berlin to Schoenholzer Street in West Berlin. They filmed the escape of 56 refugees, before flooding shut the tunnel. Another tunnel, they escape route for 57 people, was 430 feet (131 meters) long and took six months to build. Yet another began in a backyard outhouse in East Berlin and ended in a bakery on the western side.

Estimates vary widely, but between 5,000 and 16,500 people escaped East Berlin by outwitting the wall -and the border guards. Some 246 hopefuls are known to have died trying, and approximately 3,200 people were arrested for attempting escape -and were either sentenced to death or imprisoned for life. (Because of the extreme secrecy of the East German government, the exact number may never be known.)

THE FIRST CRACK IN THE WALL

By the late 1980s, the Communist governments of the Soviet Union and East Germany were near collapse. In May 1989, Hungary started cutting down the barbed wire fence along its Austrian border. East Germans vacationing at Hungary’s lakes saw their opportunity. That summer, 5,000 people a week escaped to West Germany via Hungary and Austria. On September 10th, 1989, Hungary completely opened its border with Austria. East Germans began streaming through, and by the end of the summer, 50,000 had fled East Germany.

The floodgates to freedom had opened. On November 4, 1989, Czechoslovakia opened its borders to tens of thousands of fleeing East Germans. All this fueled massive unrest in East Germany; antigovernment demonstrations were held, and the East German Communists ousted their leader.

THE WALL COMES TUMBLING DOWN

The East German government tried one last effort to stem the rush of people to the West. Late on November 9, 1989, as a postscript to a long news conference, an East German spokesman announced that, beginning immediately, the borders between East and West Germany and East and West Berlin would be open to travel unconditionally.

(Image credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1989-1110-018/Oberst, Klaus/CC-BY-SA)

Within hours, stunned and disbelieving crowds had gathered at the wall. When people crossed the border checkpoints without being shot at, the celebrations began. Berliners hugged relatives they hadn’t seen in 28 years. Masses of people took hammer and chisel, then sledgehammers, to the wall.

East Berliners marveled at the abundance in the West Berlin shops. The city of West Berlin gave each East Berliner $60 (49 euros) in “welcome money.” One man returned library books that he had borrowed from the American library in West Berlin the day before the wall went up -only 28 years overdue. The world media turned out in droves to cover the weeks-long party at the wall.

(Image credit: Flickr user Felix Petersen)

By December 3, the Communist government in East Germany was ousted. In March 1990, East Germans voted their country out of existence. Germany was officially reunited on October 3, 1990.

THE WORLD WIDE WALL

Today, very little of the Berlin Wall is left.The official demolition began on June 13, 1990. Small segments of the wall still stand in three locations, and the rest of the wall’s course is marked by a double row of cobblestones. Some segments of the wall were recycled for road building.

(Image credit: Wikipedia user Scapler)

Pieces of the wall are displayed in Washington, D.C.; at the libraries of former presidents Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush; at the Seattle Center; and, most improbably (or maybe not) in the men’s restroom of a downtown Las Vegas casino. There, the once feared and hated Berlin Wall serves as a backdrop to a row of urinals. A nice spot for a little revenge.

*****

* There were three checkpoints that were given names based on the phonetic alphabet. The Helmstedt checkpoint was called Alpha, the Dreilinden checkpoint was Bravo, and the checkpoint at Friedrichstrasse got the name Charlie.

* Although the wall was over 103 miles long, only a small section of it was painted with grafitti -the two-mile area between Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenberg Gate. The rest was plain unadorned concrete.

(Image credit: Wikipedia user Noir)

* There are 80 known deaths of people who died while attempting to cross the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989. The last death occurred just nine months before the wall fell on November 9, 1989.

* Germany was reunited on October 3, 1990.

______________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.

The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of history topics. Uncle John’s first plunge into history was a smash hit – over half a million copies sold! And this sequel gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsight, groundbreaking events, and scintillating sagas.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute

Nhow Berlin (in Berlin, of course) calls itself “Europe’s first music hotel.” It has a state-of-the-art recording studio and amenities that cater to musicians. But the real attraction is the weird architecture! The inside is artfully designed as well. See more pictures at Jetsetta. Link

It was surprisingly easy to get there. The car slipped through a checkpoint into a devastated gray and brown city of people in solemn clothing. Marx told the chauffer to drive to the bunker where Hitler was said to have committed suicide, where he was supposedly still buried.

The rubble at the site was about 20 feet high. Wearing his characteristic beret but without the trademark cigar, Marx alone climbed the side of the debris. When he reached the top, he stood still for a moment. Then he launched himself, unsmiling, into a frenetic Charleston. The dance on Hitler’s grave lasted a minute or two.

There was no joy in the dance, but the statement was clear. Link -via The Atlantic

Simone Smith visited a gourmet supermarket in Berlin and found an American section among the ethnic foods! Now stop and guess what she found there before you see it. I imagine they stock it with “comfort foods” requested by Americans living in Germany. -via Buzzfeed

It looks like an old, rusty fence, right? Just take a step to the left and look at it again.

It’s a human face! This graffiti is located on a fence in Berlin and was created by Mental Gassi, a German art collective that places large human faces in public places.

via Nerdesque | Mental Gassi Blog

Over the years, zoos have moved from being collections of caged animals designed to please the public to expansive parks dedicated to maintaining ecological diversity and conservation. While modern day zoos are mostly safe places where the public can go to see wild, exotic animals, this isn’t always the case. Here are some weird stories relating to modern zoos in honor of Visit The Zoo Day on December 27.

Image Via www.theedinburghblog.com [Flickr]

Gaza’s Painted Donkeys

When the only two zebras in the Mara Land Zoo in Gaza Strip starved to death during the Israel-Hamas war, zoo officials knew they needed the popular creatures in order to entertain the crowds. Unfortunately, replacing the expensive attractions through the secret underground tunnels in the area was not an option for the financially strapped zoo. So keepers did what any good zoologists would do and just faked their zebra collection by painting donkeys to look like their stripped cousins. To give them the dye jobs, zoo keepers used masking tape and black hair dye to create “authentic” stripping patterns on the creatures. While it may sound like a bad solution, many of the zoo’s young guests had never seen a real zebra and were equally impressed by the frauds. I guess it is still better to see a mock wild animal than no wild animals.

Source Image Via Associated Press

The Loneliest Pig In the World

What’s exotic to one culture may just be a standard farm animal to another, as evidenced by Khanzir, the only known pig in all of Afghanistan. Because pork products are illegal in the country, the pig is a true rarity in the country, who received Khanzir as a gift from China. As if the poor pig wasn’t lonely enough grazing beside goats and deer, when fear of the swine flu hit the country, he was forced to spend his time in quarantine all by himself.

The zoo director, Mr Saqib explained the zoo’s decision to isolate the animal, despite the knowledge that it would not actually be able to infect the general public, “The only reason we moved him was because Afghan people don’t have a lot of knowledge about swine flu, and so when they see a pig they get worried and think they will get ill.”

Mr. Saqib does have hopes to alleviate the pig’s loneliness though, he says after the swine flu concerns die down, he would like to get Khanzir a female companion. Perhaps then, poor little Khanzir could at least be a member of the only pig family in the country.

Source #1, #2 Image Via BBC

In Case of Escaped Rhino…

If you’ve ever wondered how keepers prepare for the possibility of an animal escaping the zoo, you’re not alone. Fortunately, thanks to the miracle of the internet, a Japanese training session to get keepers prepared for a potential rhino escape has been caught on tape and made its way into your home. The “rhino” in this case is pretty darn terrifying, what with its eight legs and all. While the team’s efforts seem effective, you have to wonder if they would work nearly as well when the beast is actually 1 ton and angry as all heck.

Orangutan Escape

Perhaps those zoo keepers should have worked on their plans for escaped primates rather than escaped rhinos. A video seen on Animal Planet (sorry its not embedded, but they don’t offer that service) demonstrates the terrifying things that happened when a four-hundred pound angry orangutan broke out of its cage and chased tourists and charged security guards. During his escapade in the outside world, Blacky also smashed some scooters and took control of a camera tripod hoping to use it as weapon against the guards who shot him with a tranquilizer dart.

In the shot, you see just how long it takes for a huge animal to fall after getting shot with a tranquilizer dart –meaning the rhino training exercise certainly was optimistic about that part of the procedure.

Nuts About Knut

In nature, it is not uncommon for a mother to abandon her cub. Some environmentalists claim that the best thing to do in these situations is to let nature take its course and let the cub die off. But when the animal is already affected by human intervention because it lives in a zoo, it seems more than a little cold-hearted to just abandon the cub. Zookeeper Thomas Dörflein agreed, which is why he saved a two newborn polar bears that were abandoned by their mother.

One of the bears died of an infection within four days, but the other, Knut, was hand raised by Dörflein, who provided the cub with around-the-clock care. Only a few months into little Knut’s life, a German tabloid carried an article about Knut that featured a quote by animal rights activist Frank Albrecht, who said the bear should have been left to die rather than be subjected to a life as “a domestic pet.” The director of another local zoo agreed with Albrect and said that keepers should have “had the courage to let the bear die.” To be fair, both of the people quoted said they were taken out of context and Dörflein has said that he was making a point about a German court’s decision saying that it was OK for another zoo to have euthanized an abandoned cub in a similar situation.

Naturally, animal lovers everywhere rallied in support of the little bear and the Berlin Zoo vowed to keep him alive and care for him. As a result of the controversy, Knut became a worldwide celebrity and videos of the little cub with his zookeeper were loaded onto YouTube for everyone to marvel at. His fame brought so many visitors to the zoo that it soon experienced its most profitable year out of its entire 163 year history.

As Knut grew older, he continued to be a popular attraction for visitors and he is still living at the zoo. Unfortunately, Dörflein died of a heart attack in 2008, although he remains a hero to many residents of Berlin.

Source Image Via Jean-Luc [Wikipedia Commons]

Human Exhibits

A long time ago (actually as recent as 1958 in Brussels), it wasn’t uncommon for humans of other races to be displayed in zoos alongside exotic animals. While racism in that time is not unusual, having people live in a zoo these days certainly is. But in 2007, the Adelaide Zoo in Australia ran a zoo exhibit where humans were housed in a former ape enclosure (they did get to go home at night). Inhabitants took part in a number of exercises and the amused onlookers were then asked for donations towards a new enclosure for a new exhibit for the chimpanzees.

Source

At midnight East Germany’s Communist rulers gave permission for gates along the Wall to be opened after hundreds of people converged on crossing points.

They surged through cheering and shouting and were be met by jubilant West Berliners on the other side.

Ecstatic crowds immediately began to clamber on top of the Wall and hack large chunks out of the 28-mile (45-kilometre) barrier.

Link | Timeline of the Wall | Interactive Map of the Wall | PBS Documentary | Image: U.S. Department of State

One bordello, hoping to stave off falling demand in the economic crisis, has begun offering discounts to customers who pedal bicycles to the door.

“It’s very difficult to find parking around here, and this option is better for our environment,” said Thomas Goetz, who owns the brothel Maison d’Envie, or House of Desire.[...]

To qualify, customers must show the receptionist either a bicycle padlock key or proof they used public transit to get to the neighborhood. That knocks the price for 45 minutes in a room, for example, to euro65 from euro70.

Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Image: flickr user keepwaddling1

“The Berlin Reunion” is the name of this France’s Royal de Luxe street theatre performance where massive marionettes entered the city of Berlin, Germany.

Also see the previous Impressive Puppetry post here at Neatorama.

Link – via Nerdcore

German urban art group Mentalgassi covers big glass-recycling containers on the streets of Berlin with something unusual: giant faces! The results are weird "metal heads" that creepily stare at you as you walk by: Link – via Wooster Collective

Simon Høgsberg, a freelance photographer based in Copenhagen, Denamrk, has taken a photo that is 100 meters long. There are 178 people in the photo and it was shot during a period of 20 days on a railroad bridge in Warschauer Straße in Berlin, Germany.

Link – via kottke.org