Honecker's successor Egon Krenz tells party all East Germans can go to the West from following day if they apply for an exit visa. Mix-up over announcement means that, within minutes, East Berliners besiege border guard posts. By midnight hundreds of thousands breach Wall and pour into the West.
Hungary breaks ranks with Warsaw Pact and officially opens border with Austria to East Germans, creating first chink in Iron Curtain. Thousands of East German "tourists" go West.
Popular protests against East German government become bolder and more widespread, but leader Erich Honecker insists: "The Wall will stand in 50, even 100 years."
U.S. President John Kennedy rides in an open-top limousine through West Berlin. "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner) he declares in a pledge of solidarity.
Eighteen-year-old Peter Fechter bleeds to death in no man's land after being shot trying to escape. Western cameramen record the scene for nearly an hour before guards take away his body.
Date of what is generally accepted as first killing by border guards after Wall went up. Guenter Litfin, 24, believed shot dead as he swam across the river Spree.
Wall claims first life as man falls to his death trying to climb down from his top-floor apartment in East Berlin's Bernauerstrasse to pavement below in West Berlin.
As a growing number of East Germans stream into West Berlin amid worsening conditions and fears the border may one day be closed, Communist East German leader Walter Ulbricht declares: "Nobody intends to build a wall." Thousands read between the lines and the exodus accelerates.
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