The voyages of Christopher Columbus led to the first lasting European contact with the Americas, inaugurating a period of European exploration, conquest, and colonization that lasted for several centuries. Columbus was not the first European explorer to reach the Americas having been preceded by the Norse expedition led by Leif Erikson in the 11th century. Leif Erikson was an Icelandic explorer considered by some as the first European to land in North America (excluding Greenland), before Columbus. There is much debate as some say that many different people, spanning centuries, set foot on the New World (as the Americas were called) before Columbus, and, of course, the ancestors of the Native Americans had already discovered it many years before.
The action that has come to symbolize the end of the Cold War is 3. tearing down the Berlin Wall. The Wall had been formed by the Soviet Union to separate East Berlin (Soviet-controlled) from West Berlin (Western-controlled). Its fall allowed Berliners (and Germans) from the Eastern half finally make their way to the Western half.
The idea was to train the South Vietnamese army to be able to handle the Vietnam armies themselves, <span>reducing the number of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam </span>
