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Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy formed the Triple Alliance. They agreed to give each other millitary support if there was a war.
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France, Russia and Great Britain signed the Triple Entente. This agreement said that the countries had a "moral obligation" to support each other.
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Serbian nationalist student Gavrilo Princip assassinates Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Habsburg, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Sarajevo.
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In the north (Franco-Belgian border) and east (Franco-German border). French troops fall back 200 kilometres.
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German General Hindenburg halts the advance of Russian forces on the East Prussian front.
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A Franco-British counteroffensive halts the German advance, less than 40 kilometres from Paris, and pushes the Germans back to the north. Nearly a million French and British troops clash with 800,000 Germans.
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250,000 members (out of 400,000) of the Assyrian-Chaldean community settled in the west of the Euphrates River and in southern Turkey are massacred.
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On 25 April, British, New Zealand, Australian and French troops attempt to land on the Gallipoli peninsula, but are blocked by Turkish troops, leaving 180,000 Allied and 66,000 Turkish dead. The last Allied troops are evacuated on 9 January 1916. The southern front is blocked until the autumn of 1917.
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The British ship "Lusitania" sank off the coast of Iceland, torpedoed by a German U-boat, leaving 1,198 missing.
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500,000 dead, French and Germans.
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Sykes-Picot Agreement: British and French divide the Middle East.
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The Battle of the Somme (northern France), the deadliest (1.2 million dead) of the conflict, begins and lasts until 18 November.
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The last Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I dies.
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February Revolution in Russia (according to the Julian calendar). The Romanov dynasty falls and Tsar Nicholas II abdicates.
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October Revolution in Russia, which brings to power the Bolshevik communists led by Lenin.
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The Bolsheviks ended Russia´s involvement in WWI, giving away a lot of territory to the Central Powers in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
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Spanish flu spreads worldwide, causing 20 million deaths in eight months.
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US President Wilson's 14-point declaration on the right of peoples to determine their own destiny, which would serve as a framework for the treaties signed after the war. The US military intervention, which will take place in the spring, will be decisive.
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Germany launches the first of a series of four major offensives on the Western Front, but the Allies hold out.
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Victorious Allied counteroffensive at Villers-Cotterets (85 kilometres from Paris) with massive US troop support, which marks the beginning of the general retreat of German forces. The Allies also advance in the Balkans and on the Eastern Front.
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Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates. Major demonstrations in Berlin.
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