-
Franz Ferdinand Assassianted
Franz Ferdinand and his wife were both assassinated.This set off a touched off a diplomatic crisis. Austria Hungary decclared what was expected to be a short war against Serbia. -
Hollywood, California, becomes the center of movie production in the U.S.
New Jersey was the center of film in America before Hollywood. Thomas Edison owned a majority of the patents on motion picture cameras and through these patents, he tightly controlled who could make films. Southern California is where America’s movie industry was based. -
Germany declares war on Russia and France. Great Britain delcares war on Germany and Austria Hungary
On August 3, 1914, Germany invaded Belgium, following a stradegy known as the Schlieffen Plan. This plan called for a holding axtion agianst Russia, combined with a quick drive through Belgium t o Paris. After France had fallen, the two German armies would defeat Russia. -
German U-boots sink the Lusitainia, and 1,1198 people died.
One of the worst disasters occured on May 7, 1915, when a U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland. Of the 1,198 persons lost, 128 Americans. The Germans defended their action on the grouds. They concluded that the liner carried ammunition. -
Alexander Graham Bell makes the first transconinental telephone call.
Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876. Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study. -
Albert Einstein proposes his gerneral theory of relativity
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist. He developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics. Einstein's work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. Einstein is best known in popular culture for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2. -
Woodrow Wilson is reelected president
Rejection was probably the last thing Wilson expected when he arrived in Europe. Everywhere he went, poeple gave him a hero's welcome. Italians displayed his picture in their windows; Parisians stewed the street with flowers. -
The battles of Verdun and the Somme claim millions of lives
Tanks ran on caterpillar treads and were built of steel so that bullets bounced off. The british first used tanks during the 1916 Battle Somme, but not very effectivley. -
The Selective Service Act sets up the draft
This act required for men to register with the government in order to be randomly selected for military service. By the end of 1918, 24 million men had registered under the act. Of this number, almost 3 million were called up. -
The United States declares War on Germany
President Wilson appeared before a joint session of Congress and asked for a declaration of war against Germany in order to "make the world safe for democracy." On April 4, Congress granted Wilson's request. -
Russia withdrawls from the war
Russia signalled her withdrawal from World War One soon after the October Revolution of 1917. The country turned in on itself with a bloody civil war between the Bolsheviks and the conservative White Guard. The significance of an action isn't always immediate, it appeared to benefit Germany at first. -
Congress passes the Sedition Act
The legislation, chiefly aimed at socialists, pacifists and other anti-war activists, came to be known as the Sedition Act. It was tied to the U.S. entrance into the World War I in April 1917 and orchestrated largely by A. Mitchell Palmer, President Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general. -
President Wilson proposes the League of Nations
The League of Nations was an international organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, created after the First World War to provide a forum for resolving international disputes. Though first proposed by President Woodrow Wilson as part of his Fourteen Points plan for an equitable peace in Europe, the United States never became a member. -
The Bolsheviks establish a Communist regime in Russia
In the Second Party Congress vote, the Bolsheviks won on the majority of important issues, hence their name. They ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and founded the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic which would become the chief constituent of the Soviet Union in 1922. -
The First World War ends
Germany had formally surrendered on November 11, 1918. All nations had agreed to stop fighting while the terms of peace were negotiated. On June 28, 1919, Germany and the Allied Nations signed the Treaty of Versailles, formally ending the war. -
Congress approves the Nineteenth Amendment, granting woman the vote
On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote—a right known as woman suffrage. At the time the U.S. was founded, its female citizens did not share all of the same rights as men, including the right to vote. It was not until 1848 that the movement for women’s rights launched on a national level with a convention in Seneca Falls, New York. -
A worldwide influenza epidemic kills over 30 million
The influenza pandemic of 1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351.