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Wilson defeated incumbent Republican William Howard Taft and third-party nominee Theodore Roosevelt to easily win the 1912 United States presidential election, becoming the first Southerner to do so since 1848. -
The RMS Lusitania was a British-registered ocean liner that was torpedoed by an Imperial German Navy U-boat during the First World War on 7 May 1915, about 11 nautical miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland -
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo (the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia-Herzegovina) on 28 June 1914 eventually led to the outbreak of the First World War. -
President Woodrow Wilson declared U.S. neutrality on August 4, 1914, and many Americans saw little reason to entangle themselves in what they viewed as European quarreling and intrigue. -
The First Battle of the Marne succeeded in pushing the Germans back for a distance of 40 to 50 miles and thus saved the capital city of Paris from capture. In this respect it was a great strategic victory, since it enabled the French to renew their confidence and to continue the war. -
The Battle of Verdun was fought from 21 February to 18 December 1916 on the Western Front in France. The battle was the longest of the First World War and took place on the hills north of Verdun-sur-Meuse. -
Sussex Incident, (March 24, 1916), torpedoing of a French cross-Channel passenger steamer, the Sussex, by a German submarine, leaving 80 casualties, including two Americans wounded -
The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British Empire and the French Third Republic against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the upper reaches of the river Somme in France -
The 1916 United States presidential election was the 33rd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1916. Incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson narrowly defeated former associate justice of the Supreme Court Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate. -
On January 17, 1917 British signals intelligence intercepted and decrypted a coded German telegram from German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann that was intended for Germany's ambassador to Mexico. -
On January 31, 1917, Bethmann Hollweg went before the German Reichstag government and made the announcement that unrestricted submarine warfare would resume the next day, February 1: "The destructive designs of our opponents cannot be expressed more strongly -
On April 4, 1917, the U.S. Senate voted in support of the measure to declare war on Germany. The House concurred two days later. The United States later declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917