-
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated
A teenage Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, as their motorcade maneuvered through the streets of Sarajevo. Next in line for the Austro-Hungarian throne, Ferdinand had not been particularly well liked in aristocratic circles. Nonetheless, his death quickly set off a chain reaction of events culminating in the outbreak of World War I. -
Germany declares war on russia and france
Germany invaded Belgium following a strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan. This plan called for a holding action agaisnt russia combined with a quick drive through belgium to paris. After France had fallen the two german armies would defeat russia -
Telephone
On Jan. 25, 1915, the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, inaugurated U.S. transcontinental telephone service as part of a demonstration that included dignitaries in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Jekyll Island, Ga. Bell, in New York at the time, made the first call to Thomas Watson, his former assistant, who was in San Francisco. The New York Times reported, “On October 9, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson talked by telephone to each other ove -
Lusitania
The earlier German attacks on merchant ships off the south coast of Ireland prompted the British Admiralty to warn the Lusitania to avoid the area or take simple evasive action, such as zigzagging to confuse U-boats plotting the vessel’s course. The captain of the Lusitania ignored these recommendations, and at 2:12 p.m. on May 7, in the waters of the Celtic Sea, the 32,000-ton ship was hit by an exploding torpedo on its starboard side. The torpedo blast was followed by a larger explosion, proba -
Albert Einstein proposes his general theory of relativity.
In 1905, Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers. This was the theory of special relativity. It introduced a new framework for all of physics and proposed new concepts of space and time -
Woodrow Wilson reelected president
Beccame the first Democratic president since Andrew Jackson to be elected for two consectutive terms of office when he defeadted suprime court. Hughes, the Republican candidate, was defeated by nearly 600,000 votes in the popular vote. The election took place while World War I was being fought in Europe, and while Mexico was going through the Mexican Revolution. -
Battles of Verdun and the Somme claim millions of lives
The Battle of Verdun in 1916 was the longest single battle of World War One. 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. Somme claimed just as much. -
Russia withdraws from war
Russia entered the war in 1914 badly prepared. Only nine years earlier, in 1905, a series of revolts and uprisings resulted in the tsar having to concede some power and form a parliament. When war broke out, Russia was a country filled with political tensions, but peasants and workers rallied to the call to defend Mother Russia. -
United States declares war on Germany
When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of America’s closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter’s attempted quarantine of the British Isles. Several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and in February 1915 Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships, -
Sedition Act
Aimed at socialists, pacifists and other anti-war activists, the Sedition Act imposed harsh penalties on anyone found guilty of making false statements that interfered with the prosecution of the war; insulting or abusing the U.S. government, the flag, the Constitution or the military; agitating against the production of necessary war materials; or advocating, teaching or defending any of these acts -
Communist regime in Russia
The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 was initiated by millions of people who would change the history of the world as we know it. When Czar Nicholas II dragged 11 million peasants into World War I, the Russian people became discouraged with their injuries and the loss of life they sustained. The country of Russia was in ruins, ripe for revolution. -
The first World War ends
At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians -
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. Speaking before the U.S. Congress on January 8, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson enumerated the last of his Fourteen Points, which called for a “general as -
19th Amendment
During the Reconstruction Era, the 15th Amendment was adopted, granting African American men the right to vote, but the Republican-dominated Congress failed to expand its progressive radicalism into the sphere of gender. The women’s suffrage movement was founded in the mid-19th century by women who had become politically active through their work in the abolitionist and temperance movements -
Influenza
Worldwide influenza epidemic kills 30 million people. The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 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. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.