...is that the Cold War didn't end all at once. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the communist coup in Russia happened in August of 1991, and the Soviet Union wasn't officially dissolved until December 1991. Even today it is hard to judge exactly when the Cold War "ended." There was no signing of a peace treaty on the deck of a battleship.

But I do remember it having a major impact on myself and others in the US. The Berlin Wall coverage was non stop on the news. There really was an air of history in the making.

I also distinctly remember reading a newspaper as a 15 year old while at the Iowa State Fair in August '91 that in HUGE block headlines reported the August coup. It was all most people were talking about. There was definitely a sense of history in the making.

I disagree completely that people in the US just shrugged it off. Many of us had lived our entire lives under the threat of complete destruction in a nuclear war. The history of the moment(s) were not lost on us.