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The First World War
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Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated. Visiting the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, the royal entourage drove through the city. While doing so, federalist Gavrilo Princip stepperd from the crowd and shot them. -
Germany declares war on Russia and France
Germany declares war on Russia and France and Great Britain declares war on Germany and Austria-Hungary. The alliance system pulled one nation after another into the conflict. Thus the great war had begun. -
Theory of Relativity
Albert Einstein proposes his general theory of relativity. Einstein spent 10 years trying to include acceleration in this theory. It was published his theory of general relativity in 1915. -
First Transcontinental Telephone call
Alexander Graham Bell makes the first transcontinental telephone call. They worked for over 10 years. Then Bell made the first telephone call to Thomas Watson from New York to San Fransisco. -
Lusitania sunk
German U-boats sank the Lusitania of the coast of Ireland and 1198 peaple died. 128 of those people were Americans. The Germans defended their actions by saying that the ships had ammunition on them, -
Woodrow Wilson reelected
Woodrow Wilson was reelected president. He became the first Democratic president since Andrew Jackson to be elected to two consecutive terms of office when he defeated Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes in the 1916 Presidential Election. -
Battles of Verdun and Somme
The battles od Verdun and Somme claimed millions of lives. The casualties from Verdun and the impact the battle had on the French Army was a primary reason for the British starting the Battle of the Somme in July 1916 in an effort to take German pressure off of the French at Verdun. The Battle of Verdun started on February 21st 1916 and ended on December 16th in 1916. -
US declares war on Germany
The United States declares war on Germany. President Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson saw Germany’s violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States, as motive for war. -
Selective Service Act
The Selective Service Act sets up the draft. The act required all men in the U.S. between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for military service. Within a few months, some 10 million men across the country had registered in response to the military draft. -
Russia withdraws
Russia withdraws from the war. The first factor concerned the major military reversals it had experienced in the field. The second stemmed from the internal upheaval and political change that culminated in the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. -
Boshelviks establish Communist regime
The Bolsheviks establish a Communist regime in Russia. A strict censorship was imposed on the press. Only the Bolshevik papers were allowed to appear. Public meetings were prohibited and only the Bolsheviks were allowed to spread their doctrine. -
League of Nations
President Wilson proposed 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. -
Congress passes Sedition Act
The congress passed the Sedition Act. The Senate voted 48 to 26 to pass the act, and the House voted 293 to 1 with Rep. Meyer London, a New York socialist, casting the only dissenting vote. He had voted against the war but went on to support it. -
WWI ends
The First World War ends. Germany had formally surrendered and all nations had agreed to stop fighting while the terms of peace were negotiated. On June 28, 1919, Germany and the Allied Nations (including Britain, France, Italy and Russia) signed the Treaty of Versailles, formally ending the war. -
Influenze epidemic
A worldwide influenza epidemic kills over 30 million. An estimated 43,000 servicemen mobilized for WWI died of influenza. An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza during the pandemic, ten times as many as in the world war.