The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Construction of the wall was commenced by the German Democratic Republic on 13 August 1961.
- The Berlin Wall was more than 140 kilometres (87 mi) long.
- Around 5,000 people attempted to escape over the Berlin Wall, with an estimated death toll ranging from 136 to more than 200.
- In 1963, an East German soldier stole a tank drove it through the Berlin Wall to escape.
- The last person who died at the Berlin Wall attempted to escape in a hot air balloon but fell to his death.
- The Berlin Wall was torn down by mistakenly-empowered citizens after an East German spokesman misspoke at a press conference and mentioned immediate border crossing privileges for every citizen.
- David Bowie performed at the Berlin Wall in 1987 while East Germans gathered to listen behind. You could hear them cheering and singing along from the other side.
- Usain Bolt owns a 3-ton segment of the Berlin Wall.
- There is a section of the Berlin Wall in the men's bathroom of the Main Street Station casino in Las Vegas.
- In 1989, Margaret Thatcher pleaded with Mikhail Gorbachev to keep the Berlin Wall up.
- The 9th of November is a significant day in Germany. In 1918, Germany became a republic. In 1923, the Bier Hall Putsch in Munich. In 1938, Kristallnacht. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell.
- The Berlin Wall's actual demolition did not happen in 1989. It began in the summer of 1990 and was not completed until 1992.
- Before the Berlin Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans defected from their country.
- On 15 August 1961, Conrad Schumann was the first East German border guard to escape by jumping the barbed wire to West Berlin.
- The East German government claimed that the Berlin Wall was an "anti-fascist protective rampart" intended to dissuade aggression from the West, but it was mostly to prevent their citizens from fleeing to West Berlin.
- Inside the Berlin Wall ended up the ironically-named the Church of Reconciliation. GDR authorities ordered the church to be dynamited in 1985.
- A Swedish woman "married" the Berlin Wall in front of a few guests in 1979. She was devastated when most of it was torn down in 1989.