Shortly after midnight on this day in 1961, East German soldiers begin laying down barbed wire and bricks as a barrier between Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the democratic western section of the city.
After World War II, defeated Germany was divided into Soviet, American, British and French zones of occupation. The city of Berlin, though technically part of the Soviet zone, was also split, with the Soviets taking the eastern part of the city. After a massive Allied airlift in June 1948 foiled a Soviet attempt to blockade West Berlin, the eastern section was drawn even more tightly into the Soviet fold. Over the next 12 years, cut off from its western counterpart and basically reduced to a Soviet satellite, East Germany saw between 2.5 million and 3 million of its citizens head to West Germany in search of better opportunities. By 1961, some 1,000 East Germans–including many skilled laborers, professionals and intellectuals–were leaving every day.
In August, Walter Ulbricht, the Communist leader of East Germany, got the go-ahead from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to begin the sealing off of all access between East and West Berlin. Soldiers began the work over the night of August 12-13, laying more than 100 miles of barbed wire slightly inside the East Berlin border. The wire was soon replaced by a six-foot-high, 96-mile-long wall of concrete blocks, complete with guard towers, machine gun posts and searchlights. East German officers known as Volkspolizei (“Volpos”) patrolled the Berlin Wall day and night.
Many Berlin residents on that first morning found themselves suddenly cut off from friends or family members in the other half of the city. Led by their mayor, Willi Brandt, West Berliners demonstrated against the wall, as Brandt criticized Western democracies, particularly the United States, for failing to take a stand against it. President John F. Kennedy had earlier said publicly that the United States could only really help West Berliners and West Germans, and that any kind of action on behalf of East Germans would only result in failure.
In ancient civilizations, geography affected them in so many ways, like the climate, resources, and the landscape that they use. ... The mountains provided them with protection against invasions, but the mountains were also used for trading with other to get the resources that they needed.
The correct answer is "Sweatt ruled that “separate but equal” graduate and professional schools were constitutional. Brown overturned that decision."
<em>"Sweatt vs Painter" </em>ruling was successful in challenging the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation established by previous case "Plessy vs Fergusson". Sweatt ultimately won the case when the Supreme Court concluded that Thurgood Marshall School of Law failed to qualify for being a "separate but equal" educational institution, as it lacked the sufficient facilities to become one.
<em>"Brown vs Board of Education"</em> ruling effectively overturned the ruling of the <em>"Plessy vs Fergusson case"</em>, when the Supreme Court indicated that state laws that permitted separate public schools were unconstitutional.
On May 8, 1541, south of present-day Memphis, Tennessee, Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto reaches the Mississippi River, one of the first European explorers to ever do so.
