November ninth

Today's Highlight in History:
On November ninth, 1989, communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West; joyous Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall.

On this date:
In 1872, fire destroyed nearly a thousand buildings in Boston.

In 1918, Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm the Second announced he would abdicate. He then fled to the Netherlands.

In 1935, United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other labor leaders formed the Committee for Industrial Organization.

In 1938, Nazis looted and burned synagogues as well as Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria in what became known as "Kristallnacht."

In 1953, author-poet Dylan Thomas died in New York at age 39.

In 1963, twin disasters struck Japan as some 450 miners were killed in a coal-dust explosion, and 160 people died in a train crash.

In 1965, the great Northeast blackout occurred as several states and parts of Canada were hit by a series of power failures lasting up to 13 and a-half hours.

In 1970, former French president Charles De Gaulle died at age 79.

In 1976, the UN General Assembly approved ten resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa, including one characterizing the white-ruled government as "illegitimate."

In 1988, former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, a major figure in the Watergate scandal, died in Washington at age 75.

Ten years ago: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a historic non-aggression treaty with Germany, winning praise from German leaders in Bonn for his role in the peaceful fall of the Berlin Wall.

Five years ago: In a pair of telephone interviews, O.J. Simpson told Associated Press reporter Linda Deutsch that people have supported rather than shunned him since his acquittal, and that he has learned that fame and wealth are illusions: "The only thing that endures is character."

One year ago: With fireworks, concerts and a huge party at the landmark Brandenburg Gate, Germany celebrated the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The flight data recorder from EgyptAir Flight 990 was recovered from the Atlantic Ocean and shipped to a National Transportation Safety Board laboratory in Washington.

"All life is an experiment."

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., US Supreme Court justice (1841-1935).