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Hollywood California
Hollywood, California, becomes the center of movie production in the United States. Thomas Edison held many patents on film equipment, and independent filmakers flocked to Hollywood. The physical distance from the Edison Trust made it easy to work on their films without the tight control and patent enforcement. -
Assassination of Ferdinand
On June 28, 1914, a teenage Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie. It occurred as their motorcade maneuvered through the streets of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of the reasons Ferdinand was assassinated because he was known to be over-bearing and power driven. -
Declaring War
Germany declares war on Russia and France. Great Britain declares war on Germany and Austria-Hungary. Great Britain declared war in response to Germany declaring war. -
General Theory of Relativity
Albert Einstein proposes his general theory of relativity. It determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and he showed that the speed of light within a vacuum is the same no matter the speed at which an observer travels. -
First Transcontinental Call
Alexander Graham Bell makes first trnscontinental telephone call. This was nearly a year after the line was put into place, and it took place with the call originating from New York to San Francisco. -
German U-Boats sink Lusitania
German U-Boats torpeoed the Lusitania, and 1,198 People were killed. It was sunk off the coast of Ireland in the Celtic Sea. Germany said their reasoning was because the ship was an enemy ship, not a passenger ship. -
Battle of Verdun
The Battle of Verdun and the Somme claim millions of lives. It lasted until December 18, 1916. It was fought on the Western Front between the German and French. -
Wilson reelected.
Woodrow Wilson is reelected president. The United States presidential election of 1916 was the 33rd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1916. Incumbent President Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic candidate, was pitted against Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate. -
US declares war on Germany
At 8:30 on the evening of April 2, 1917, 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. -
Selective Service Act
The Selective Service Act 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 was canceled with the end of the war on November, 1918. -
Wilson proposed 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. -
Russia withdraws from WWI
After the October Revolution Russia started peace talks with the Reich (the Germans kept pushing east, some units went so far so quickly that they lost contact with their supply lines) On 3rd of March 1918 both belligerents signed a treaty in Brest Litovsk (now Belarus) ending the war on the Eastern Front. -
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 -
Influenza Epidemic
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), killed over 30 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. -
WWI Ends
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 between the Eastern and Western Fronts.