In the summer of 1989 it became harder to hold the line when a new and more liberal regime in Hungary opened its border. The flow of migrants was intensified in early November when Czechoslovakia also granted free access to West Germany through its border. East Germany's hardline Communist leader, Erich Honecker, resigned and so did his entire cabinet. East Germany's new leader, Egon Krenz, called for free democratic elections.
The wall could not withstand this pressure from people power. Clive Davies was our man on the spot who described what happened next on November 10.
"A divided city was joyously joined together again yesterday when East decided to go West. Tens of thousands of East Berliners swarmed to the border crossing point, free for the first time in almost 30 years to pass unhindered into West Berlin.
When the news that they had waited for so long to hear came they knew they were supposed to get their passports stamped before travelling. Some observed the new regulations introduced by East German authorities. "See, I queued for four hours to get this," said one woman triumphantly, showing off a smudged ink oblong in her passport.
Others simply turned up at the border with their identity cards and found themselves waved through by the once detested East German border police. People power made its point.
From the moment they woke up, they talked of little but their new and unexpected freedom to travel. Thousands had crossed in the night, perhaps fearing that it was all a dream or a dreadful mistake and that if they delayed they would find the border gates slammed in their faces.
They were the ones crowding the phone booths by breakfast time, calling the East Berlin offices and workplaces to absent themselves from the day's shift.
"There are four of us in our office," said a man brandishing a sausage at a snackbar. "Two of them are over there this morning. They said they'll come back to work on Monday. So maybe I'll go to West Berlin on Monday."
Many of the earliest escapees yesterday morning also seemed to be troubled by disbelief. "We know it's true but we just want to see for ourselves that it's true. We just want to go there and then come back," said one of two bright young women.
But shouldn't they both have been at work? "No, we're off today," said her companion, lying with a laugh.
Almost everyone seemed to be laughing in East Berlin, a city never noted for its gaiety. And those who were not already on their way were preoccupied with preparations for their imminent departure.
Paying for an East Berlin beer with a West German banknote made the waiter skip with pleasure. "Wunderbar!" he beamed. Moments later he was flaunting the note below the nose of a colleague. "Now I'll be able to buy a beer when I get there," he crowed.
Money is an important consideration for visitors from East to West Berlin. Cross from the opposite direction and one deutschmark buys one ost-mark. One hundred ost-marks bought 12 West German marks yesterday morning and only nine marks by nightfall.
Yet there were still long, dense queues outside the banks and money-changing offices. Most East Berliners have money to spare since normally there are not enough consumer goods in the shops on which to spend their earnings. Others have relatives in West Berlin and still others qualify for the 100 mark gift which the West German government presents to all East German refugees.
The stores in West Berlin were hugely crowded. The scene resembled the last hour of the last shopping day before Christmas rather than the first day of the open border. Bags of sweets and confectionery were much in demand. Batteries, household goods and toys were similarly popular. Long queues formed at every check-out desk.
One pensioner, who unusually had been to West Berlin before, was content with her carrier bag of booty: a bunch of bananas, two boxes of chocolates and a bumper bag of toffees. Others heading homewards towards the border carried electrical goods and large parcels wrapped in brown paper and thick string.
No-one is attempting to guess how many of today's travellers will actually decide to stay in West Berlin to join the 185,000 East Germans who have already fled their country this year.
The West Berliners made their neighbours more than welcome yesterday. They tooted their car horns, thrust gifts at complete strangers and insisted on buying rounds of drinks. The streets of West Berlin were as packed as if for a carnival. The Kufürstendamm, Berlin's shopping street, resembled an impromptu street party.
Yet the blatantly prosperous half of Berlin is troubled by unemployment and has an acute housing shortage. The city authorities will be hoping that most of their visitors return almost at once.
My distinct impression was that almost everyone queueing at Friedrichstrasse station – one of the most popular crossing points – was travelling on a return ticket. They were day trippers keener to celebrate their freedom to travel than to celebrate the freedom of an escape to the West.
There were families with prams and pushchairs, but very few people obviously carrying all their worldly possessions on their way to a new life. The absence of suitcases and baggage was much appreciated on the train for the short journey to the West. All carriages were packed to capacity, and far beyond.
Yet curiously it was even worse on the return journey, when it took ten times as long to get back into East Berlin as it had taken to depart earlier in the day.
The irony was not lost on the huge crowd thronging the stairways and halls of the station and waiting to file past the border guards. A people who had become accustomed to queues and to unyielding bureaucracy was showing signs of impatience.
"Let us in! We are trying to get into East Berlin," they shouted. "We're staying here" came the response, mocking one of the slogans of the street protests of a few weeks ago.
Perhaps not all was good humour and jollity. At the Brandenburg Gate, that monumental symbol of the divided city, young West Germans clambered up on the walls to taunt the East German guards. "Take down the wall, take down the wall" they chanted, their whistles and cat-calls drowned by a hovering helicopter. Those who toppled off the wall were quickly pushed back again by the East German border guards.
For the most part, however, the mood throughout the city was joyfully bewildered.
"I have a brother in Heidelberg," confided one East Berliner. "I got permission to go and see him for his 50th birthday. I said perhaps we'll see you again on your 60th birthday and now I can go tomorrow if I want to."
"I'm going to West Berlin," said the young father pointing to his son, "so that he can say he went over there the day they opened a hole in the wall."
"It won't last for very long all this excitement," said another father holding his son astride his shoulders, "but no-one wants to miss any of it all. It is madness... wonderful madness."
On October 3, 1990 the two Germanys merged to form a new united country.

Crowds say farewell to city's tram system
1959 On November 9 we ran a report headlined: "Illuminated Convoy Takes 600 for a sentimental ride." Our man Dennis Bolton was aboard.

"TRAM No 178, dressed overall in coloured lights, brought to a close the last chapter of tramway history in Leeds on Saturday night. Gliding through the November murk like an illuminated gondola, it was the last in a ceremonial convoy of 10 trams which was watched by several thousand people.
The crowd gave the trams a rousing farewell. They cheered, sang Auld Lang Syne, waved and sounded hooters, bells and klaxons as the trams, carrying 600 passengers wound their slow, proud way from the city centre to the three remaining termini – at Cross Gates, Halton and Temple Newsam.
Behind, in front and alongside were even longer processions of private cars, motor scooters and bicycles, all carrying enthusiasts anxious not to miss one precious second of the great occasion.
When the trams left the main Swinegate depot it was like a gala film premiere with television film cameras whirring and a whole battery of flash bulbs rippling along the crowds on the line-side.
Eight of the trams were for the general public and two – both illuminated – carried official guests. All 10 cars were Horsfield trams, which have formed the backbone of the Leeds fleet since they were built about 1930.
The tram fans had a wonderful time during the 75-minute journey.
They popped their heads in and out of the windows, took photographs of the cars from every imaginable angle, gave the indicators affectionate turns and generally enjoyed a restrained orgy of "last tramitis".
For this privilege some came a long way – from London, from the West Country, from places on the South Coast, from Scotland and many areas in the North of England. When the clatter of the trams had died away, many of these people stayed on for quite a time, looking at the cars standing in the now-silent depot. When it was all over and the trams had been put to rest, the official guests completed the transport cycle by riding by bus to a celebration dinner. There the last words on the trams were said in official speeches. On the top table at the dinner was a silver-plated fruit bowl made from the driver's foot bell of a Leeds tram and presented to Alderman Rafferty by the Transport Department staff.

I will work for freedom, pledges President Kennedy
1960 No-one was calling it Camelot yet, but there was a strong sense of a new purpose and idealism about the new man for the White House – the youngest ever elected president in US history and the first Roman Catholic. This was our report on November 10.

"Senator John Kennedy, in his first statement after his election victory, today pledged himself to work for the cause of freedom around the world. Speaking in his home town, Hyannis Port, Cape Cod, the 43-year-old President-elect said the next four years would be difficult and challenging.
A supreme national effort would be needed to move the country safely through the 1960s, he said, adding: "I can assure you that every degree of mind and spirit I possess will be devoted to the long range interest of the United States and to the cause of freedom around the world."
"Now my wife and I prepare for a new Administration – and for a new baby," he added. His attractive wife, Jacqueline, who is expecting her second child soon, stood by his side.
Mr Kennedy's prepared statement was addressed to all citizens of the United States. In it he said: "It is a satisfying moment for me and I want to express my appreciation to all of them and to Mr Nixon personally."
Senator Kennedy won victory for the Democrats after one of the longest and most tense neck-and-neck election struggles for the Presidency of the United States during this century."
It was the first time television played an important role in US elections. Millions of viewers watched JFK and his opponent Richard Nixon battle it out in a series of television debates. The final result showed that JFK had actually won with an even narrower margin than first announced – 34,227,096 popular votes to Richard Nixon's 34,107,646.
Richard Nixon won in 1968.

'Lady Chatterley's Lover' is a sell-out
1960 For Philip Larkin, sex began between the end of the Lady Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP. DH Lawrence's story of Lady Chatterley's sexually explicit encounters with Mellors, the family gamekeeper, had been published in Italy in 1928 but banned in Britain.
Penguin won the right to publish the book in its entirety and sent 12 copies to the Director of Public Prosecutions challenging him to prosecute, which he did. The six-day trial at the Old Bailey began on October 27 and gripped the nation. Prosecution counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones asked the jury, "Is it a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?" The answer was yes.
As the paperback, price three shillings and sixpence, went on sale on November 10, this was our story as the public expressed its view.

"COPIES of the unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover were on sale yesterday and within minutes, booksellers had sold out. Penguin have already printed 200,000 – and sold them. Another 300,000 are being printed and the total may well be near the million mark.
All day yesterday the orders piled up. The first 200,000 were sent out by Penguin to people who ordered them before August. The next batch of 300,000 will be ready next week and printing will go on until the demand is exhausted.
At one of London's biggest bookshops there were 900 copies available for sale at 9am. After 15 minutes they had all gone. An assistant said: "There were only two women among the buyers."
The manager commented: "Hundreds of people were waiting outside the shop when we opened. There has never been anything quite like this."
Teenage girls queued alongside elderly men outside Nottingham bookshops yesterday for their copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Within a few minutes of opening all the city's main booksellers reported: "Every copy has gone." A man asked a Beeston (Notts) newsagent for 20 copies – "one for myself and the rest for my workmates" but he was rationed to two.
Many York people who wanted to buy a copy of the novel were disappointed. So great has been the demand for the book that nearly all the city's booksellers had no copies to spare to sell over the counter. All their stock had been ordered.
Copies of the book were sold out at Lincoln's leading bookshops. The book was being displayed for sale sealed so that people would not be able to pick it up and glance through it.
Copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover will be in the Leeds Public Libraries today. But because of the number of reservations already received, borrowers will not find the book on the shelves for many months. Yesterday the city's Libraries and Arts Committee agreed to purchase 60 copies of the book.
The committee's chairman, Alderman Arthur Adamson, said: "We are treating it as an ordinary book".
Supplies of the book had not arrived in Harrogate yesterday. A spokesman for a local chain of newsagents said: "I have been surprised by the people who have requested it – people who you would not think would entertain such a book."
At the shop of WH Smith & Son it was stated: "We have a long waiting list and are receiving many inquiries."
A Wetherby bookshop sold 32 copies within three hours of opening."
Within a year Lady Chatterley's Lover had sold two million copies, outselling even the Bible. The trial was a landmark. From this point on it became far harder to prosecute on grounds of obscenity.