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Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by a Bosnian Serb nationalist during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The killings sparked a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I by early August. -
Germany invades Belgium
The German invasion of Belgium was a military campaign which began on 4 August 1914. Earlier, on 24 July, the Belgian government had announced that if war came it would uphold its historic neutrality. -
Battle of Marne
The First Battle of the Marne marked the end of the German sweep into France and the beginning of the trench warfare that was to characterise World War One. -
Gallipoli Campaign
The Gallipoli campaign was a military campaign in the First World War that took place on the Gallipoli peninsula, from 17 February 1915 to 9 January 1916. -
Battle of Verdun
The Battle of Verdun was fought from 21 February to 18 December 1916 on the Western Front in France. The battle was the longest of the First World War and took place on the hills north of Verdun-sur-Meuse. -
Battle of the Somme
The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme Offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British Empire and French Third Republic against the German Empire. -
Death of Grigori Rasputin
Rasputin was murdered during the early morning on December 30, 1916 at the home of Felix Yusupov. He died of three gunshot wounds, one of which was a close-range shot to his forehead. -
Tsar Nicholas abdicates
On 15 March 1917 (according to the western calendar) Tsar Nicholas II abdicated from the Russian throne. -
US declares war on Germany
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to send U.S. troops into battle against Germany in World War I. -
Lenin's return to from exile
On April 16, 1917, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party, returns to Petrograd after a decade of exile to take the reins of the Russian Revolution. -
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a separate peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, between the new Bolshevik government of Russia and the Central Powers, that ended Russia's participation in World War I. -
Armistice ending WWI
On Nov. 11, 1918, after more than four years of horrific fighting and the loss of millions of lives, the guns on the Western Front fell silent. -
Treaty of Versailles signed
The Treaty of Versailles was the primary treaty produced by the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I.