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Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife, visit Sarajevo in Bosnia. A bomb is thrown at their auto but misses. Undaunted, they continue their visit only to be shot and killed a short time later by a lone assassin. Believing the assassin to be a Serbian nationalist, the Austrians target their anger toward Serbia. -
Great Britain declares war on Germany. The declaration is binding on all Dominions within the British Empire including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa. The United States declares its neutrality. -
- A German U-Boat torpedoes the British passenger liner Lusitania off the Irish coast. It sinks in 18 minutes, drowning 1,201 persons, including 128 Americans. President Woodrow Wilson subsequently sends four diplomatic protests to Germany.
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American voters re-elect President Woodrow Wilson who had campaigned on the slogan, "He kept us out of war." which would allow the U.S out of the bloodshed and war -
The British intercept a telegram sent by Alfred Zimmermann in the German Foreign Office to the German embassies in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City. Its message outlines plans for an alliance between Germany and Mexico against the United States. The Zimmermann telegram is passed along by the British to the Americans and is then made public, causing an outcry from interventionists in the U.S., such as former president Teddy Roosevelt, who favor American military involvement in the war. -
after Germany sank the Lusitania Americans wanted a war, but President Willson ask Germany to apologize and promise to not sink anymore of our ship and they did but later they continued so congress voted to declare war on the cental powers -
the first American troops arrived in the port of St. Nazaire. There were 14,000 soldiers in what was called the 1st Provisional Division. It was provisional because the United States Army had not operated in division-sized units since the American Civil War. -
The Sedition Act of 1918 was enacted on May 16, 1918 to extend the Espionage Act of 1917. The Sedition Act covered a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds. -
At 5:10 am, in a railway car at Compiègne, France, the Germans sign the Armistice which is effective at 11 am--the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Fighting continues all along the Western Front until precisely 11 o'clock, with 2,000 casualties experienced that day by all sides. Artillery barrages also erupt as 11 am draws near as soldiers yearn to claim they fired the very last shot in the war. -
At the Palace of Versailles in France, a German delegation signs the Treaty formally ending the war. Its 230 pages contain terms that have little in common with Wilson's Fourteen Points as the Germans had hoped. Germans back home react with mass demonstrations against the perceived harshness, especially clauses that assess sole blame for the war on Germany.