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What exactly was the historical significance of Nov. 9, 1989? Having spent much of the summer of that year in Berlin, I have long bitterly regretted that I was not there to join in the party the night the wall came down. I mean, what kind of an aspirant historian misses history being made?

But two Berlin friends recently made me feel better by confessing that, despite being in the right city on the right date, they too missed the fall of the wall. One simply slept through the tumultuous events that unfolded after an East German official casually stated that the border was open. Her brother tried to rouse her, but she assumed he was joking when he shouted through her bedroom door: "The wall's coming down!" My other friend deliberately went to bed early to be fresh for a morning...