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Franz Ferdinand Assassination
The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated sparking the beginning of the first World War -
Archduke killed
Gavirlo Principe Shoots and kills him and his wife.This also triggers World War 1. -
Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, who was killed in Sarajevo along with his wife Duchess Sophie by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip. ... Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. Russia mobilizes. -
First use of gas as a weapon by the Germans
On April 22, 1915, German forces shock Allied soldiers along the western front by firing more than 150 tons of lethal chlorine gas against two French colonial divisions at Ypres, Belgium. This was the first major gas attack by the Germans, and it devastated the Allied line. -
Sinking of the Lusitania
On May 7, 1915, less than a year after World War I (1914-18) erupted across Europe, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the RMS Lusitania, a British ocean liner en route from New York to Liverpool, England. Of the more than 1,900 passengers and crew members on board, more than 1,100 perished, including more than 120 Americans. -
Wilson reelected; pledged American neutrality
Issues: Wilson ran for reelection for the Democrats on the call that he had kept the United States out of the war. Charles ... As war raged in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson argued that the United States should remain neutral in this conflict, urging Americans to be "impartial in thought as well as in action. -
Zimmermann Note
A secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico in the prior event of the United States entering World War I against Germany. The proposal was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. After the German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann publicly admitted the telegram was genuine on March 3, and helped generate support for the United States declaration of war on Germany in April. -
U.S. declares war
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. -
Bolsheviks led by Lenin overthrow Russian government
Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin led his leftist revolutionaries in a revolt against the ineffective Provisional Government (Russia was still using the Julian calendar at the time, so period references show a 25 October date). -
War ends
Germany signed an armistice (an agreement for peace and no more fighting) that had been prepared by Britain and France. At the start of 1918, Germany was in a strong position and expected to win the war. -
Treaty of Versailles
the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919 in Versailles, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which directly lead to World War I.
