The fall of the Berlin wall caught the world by surprise. For months, East Germany's beleaguered communist rulers had tried in vain to silence a growing opposition movement and stem the tide of people pouring out of the country. On the night of Nov. 9, 1989, an East German official held a press conference to announce new government travel policies but inadvertently announced that crossings to the West would be opened "without delay." Within hours, thousands of East Berliners ...

Are you furious? If not, you should be. The giant financial institutions that make up Wall Street have been bailed out, thanks to trillions of dollars of our money, and are on track to hand out record-breaking multibillion-dollar bonuses while millions of regular folks are hurting. Even outside the gilded halls of Wall Street, there's no shortage of good cheer: many economists say the Great Recession has ended, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke keeps seeing "green shoots" in ...

President Barack Obama's Nobel peace surprise was given "primarily for his work on and commitment to nuclear disarmament," according to Agot Valle, a Norwegian politician who served on the award committee. Valle told the Wall Street Journal that the stewards of the prize wanted to "support" Obama's goal, as expressed recently at the United Nations, "of a world without nuclear weapons." It's tough to think of a goal more widely espoused than the dream of an H-bomb-free planet. Ronald ...

Two journalists working for Associated Press were wounded when they were struck by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, the news agency reported Wednesday. If you're in need of some quick cash, here are six stories of people who found a fortune when -- and where -- they least expected it. 1. Lose a hammer, find a horde In November 1992, a farmer living near the village of Hoxne in Suffolk, England, lost a hammer in one of his fields, ...

Since the death of Michael Jackson on June 25, the pop star's life and history have become the subject of intense scrutiny. Now we can add a new item to the pile of Jackson resources: his Stasi file. According to a report from the Stasi, the East German secret police, that has recently come to light, on June 18, 1988, at precisely 2:52 p.m., several cars arrived at Checkpoint Charlie on the West Berlin side of the Berlin ...

For decades the Iron Curtain divided Germany because the socialist German Democratic Republic did not wish to continue losing its citizens and skilled workers to the "golden" West. She wasn't yet three days old when she experienced her first revolution. For young mothers it truly stank -- due to a shortage of diapers in the Hoyerswerda Women's Hospital. In the maternity ward people's anger was bubbling over and it wasn't only the babies who were screaming. It is the end ...

Sales of Michael Jackson's albums have gone through the roof since the news of his death. On Friday, the late singer was enjoying the commercial revival that had been eluding him in recent years, due to a lack of new material and public interest. Michael Jackson albums took top 15 slots on Amazon.com top 50 album downloads. The story was the same on iTunes where the late singer's albums dominated seven out of the ten top slots on ...

The tragedy of Michael Jackson's death at age 50, reportedly from cardiac arrest, pales in comparison to the tragedy of his life. To understand all that Jackson had and lost requires wiping away three decades of plastic surgeries that deformed him, erratic behavior that made his name synonymous with the warping powers of fame, and a 2005 trial for sexually abusing a child that, even though he was spared of any finding of wrongdoing, made him a pariah to ...

Pope Benedict XVI hopes his planned visit to Jerusalem's Western Wall next month will be taken as a gesture of reconciliation in the long-troubled relationship between Judaism and the Catholic Church. But at least one influential rabbi will take offense — unless the pontiff removes or conceals the golden cross he wears on a chain around his neck, "out of respect" for the Jews. Explaining his demand that Benedict hide the very symbol of the Catholicism he represents, Rabbi ...

Some of them are respected scientists. Some of them are psychologists. At least one of them is a briefly married former TV-morning-show host. A surprising number of them are stand-up comedians. And they all want to give you dating advice. If you're single and don't wish to be, have they got a TV show/book/scientific theory for you! As if you haven't suffered enough. According to the most recent census figures, about 84 million Americans ages 20 to 75 are ...