. . . or click on the link here for Audio Player – ABC Radio News – November 25, 1989 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection
Hot on the heels of the dismantled Berlin Wall came sweeping protests throughout the Communist Bloc countries of Eastern Europe, this November 25th in 1989.
Now it was Prague’s turn. As upwards of half a million protesters turned out in Wenceslas Square, an unlikely conference took place between dissident leaders and the Communist leaders. After the conference, the crowd was addressed by opposition leaders Vaclav Havel and deposed leader Alexander Dubcek and carried live on State-run Czech television to another estimated 15 million people. Things were definitely on a fast-track in Czechoslovakia.
Meanwhile, two Colombian drug lords escaped efforts at capture by doing the unexpected – while their guards held off police with machine guns, Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa ran in their underwear through a cane field and off into the jungle nearby.
Officials at the Johnson Space Center in Houston announced Shuttle Discovery was going to make its planned landing in California later on that evening on schedule, weather permitting. And at the unveiling of new Space stamps in Washington, Astronaut Buzz Aldrin announced it was likely there would be an expedition to Mars coming up in the future.
And Japan was preparing to send a large scale mission to Vietnam to promote cultural relations between the two countries. In a newspaper report, it said Japan was hoping the mission would help create an air of peace and stability in the former Indochina. the report went to say Japan was prepared to support reforms the Communist Party in Vietnam was planning on implementing. Japan was also planning on resuming aid, after cutting it off following Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in 1978.
And that’s a little of what went on, this November 25th in 1979 as reported by ABC Radio News.
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