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Hollywood, California, becomes the center of movie production in the U.S.
The first feature film was created. The Nestor Company built the first movie studio in Hollywood in nineteen-eleven. Two years later, Cecil B. Demille produced the first long, serious movie in Hollywood. It was called "The Squaw Man." Director D. W. Griffith also arrived in Hollywood in those early years. He created new ways of using a camera to tell a story through moving pictures. -
Archeduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated.
As the royal entourage drove through the city, Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip stepped from the crowd and shot the Archduke and his wife Sophie. Princip was a member of the Black Hand, an organization promoting Serbian nationalism. The assassinations touched off a diplomatic crisis. -
Germany declares war on Russia and France. Great Britain declares war on Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Germany invaded Belgium. In Brussels, the Belgian capital, an American war correspondent described the first major refugee crisis of the 20th century. As german troops swept across Belgium, thousands of civilians fled in terror. -
Albert Einstein proposes his general theory of relativity
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. -
Alexander Graham Bell makes first transcontinental telephone call.
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. -
Geran U-boats sink the Lusitania, and 1,198 people die.
One of the worst disasters. Of the 1,198 people lost, 128 were Americans. Despite Germany's explanation, Americans became outraged with Germany because of the loss of life. -
The battles of Verdun and the Somme claim millions of lives.
The british suffered 60,000 casualties the first day alone. The scale of slaughter was horrific. Known as trench warfare. -
Woodrow Wilson is reelected president
pitted against Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate. After a hard-fought contest, Wilson defeated Hughes by nearly 600,000 votes in the popular vote and secured a narrow majority in the Electoral College by winning several swing states with razor-thin margins. Wilson's re-election marked the first time that a Democratic Party candidate had won two consecutive Presidential elections since Andrew Jackson won re-election in the 1832 election. -
Russia Withdrawls from the war.
Russia withdraws from the war when the Communist Party takes the reigns of the government, ceding possession of these territories to Germany, temporarily ending the threat from the east.begin a strategic withdrawal to the new Siegfried Line (called the Hindenburg Line by the Allies) which shortens the overall Front by 25 miles by eliminating an unneeded bulge. During the three-week long withdrawal, the Germans conduct a scorched earth policy, destroying everything of value. -
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."America thus joined the carnage that had been ravaging Europe since 1914. Germany's renewal of unrestricted submarine warfare and the revelation of a proposed German plot to ally with Mexico against the US prompted Wilson's action. -
The selective service Act sets up the draft
Authorized the federal government to raise a national army for the American entry into World War I through the compulsory enlistment of people. It was envisioned in December 1916 and brought to President Woodrow Wilson's attention shortly after the break in relations with Germany in February 1917. The Act itself was drafted by then-Captain (later Brigadier General) Hugh S. Johnson after the United States entered World War I by declaring war on Germany. -
President Wilson proposes the League of Nations.
He hoped to keep Russia in the war by convincing the Bolsheviks that they would receive a better peace from the Allies, to bolster Allied morale, and to undermine German war support. The address was immediately hailed in the United States and Allied nations, and even by Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, as a landmark of enlightenment in international relations. -
The Bolsheviks establish a Communist regime in Russia
overthrew the Provisional Government in Petrograd and established the Russian SFSR, eventually shifting the capital to Moscow in 1918. The Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918. -
Congress passes the Sedition Act.
Congress extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broad range of spoken or written offenses, including the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language” about the federal government, the U.S. flag or the armed forces or speech “that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt.” 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 W -
The First World War ends.
This first global conflict had claimed from 9 million to 13 million lives and caused unprecedented damage. Germany had formally surrendered on November 11, 1918, 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.