On Nov. 9, 1989, communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West for the first time in decades — a landmark event often referred to as the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Also on this date:

In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt made the first trip abroad of any sitting U.S. president in order to observe construction of the Panama Canal.

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 thousands of Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria in a pogrom or deliberate persecution that became known as “Kristallnacht.”

In 1965, the great Northeast blackout began with a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2

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