On the way to work today, I was listening to the radio.  I happened to be listening to NPR, which is out-of-the-norm for me.  (I normally listen to an alternative music station if I listen to the radio at all.)  As most people know, NPR usually has frequent news breaks.  During one of those news break, the announcer said that President Dmitry Medvedev announced that his country (Russia) is going to grant diplomatic recognition to the Georgian separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  Unless something happens to stop this recognition, the world will have two more countries.

You’re probably wondering why I’m blogging about this since I hardly ever … er … never blog about world news.  This news got me thinking about how much the world has changed since I was younger.  I remember when:

• Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia were all part of the Soviet Union (USSR).  I also remember that the athletes in the Olympics represented the USSR rather than their individual countries.
• East and West Germany were separate countries, with Berlin divided by the Berlin Wall.
• The Czech Republic and Slovakia made up the country of Czechoslovakia.
• Slovenia, Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia all made up the country of Yugoslavia.

Those are the major changes that I remember happening while I was in school.  However, I know there’ve been a lot more changes than what I’ve listed. ;) What changes in the world do you remember?