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Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
On June 28, 1914, 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. -
Great War begins
The trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. -
Kaiser declares “open season” on ships
Proclaimed that the North Sea was a war zone -
Lusitania sank
On the afternoon of May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed without warning by a German submarine off the south coast of Ireland. Within 20 minutes, the vessel sank into the Celtic Sea. Of 1,959 passengers and crew, 1,198 people were drowned, including 128 Americans. -
Battle of the Somme
The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme Offensive, was one of the largest battles of the First World War. Fought between July 1 and November 1, 1916, near the Somme River in France, it was also one of the bloodiest military battles in history. On the first day alone, the British suffered more than 57,000 casualties, and by the end of the campaign the Allies and Central Powers would lose more than 1.5 million men. -
Wilson re-elected
Woodrow Wilson became the first Democratic president since Andrew Jackson to be elected to two consecutive terms of office when he defeated Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes in the 1916 Presidential Election -
Zimmerman note intercepted
In 1917, the Zimmermann Telegram, a message from the German foreign secretary, to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the case of war between the United States and Germany, is published on the front pages of newspapers across America. Intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence in January 1917, Zimmermann instructed the ambassador to offer significant financial aid to Mexico if it agreed to enter any future U.S-German conflict as a German ally. -
US declares war on Germany
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US declares war on Germany
Two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany, the U.S. House of Representatives endorses the declaration by a vote of 373 to 50, and America formally enters World War I. 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. -
Selective Service Act
Six weeks after the United States formally entered the First World War, the U.S Congress passes the Selective Service Act on May 18, 1917, giving the U.S. president the power to draft soldiers. When he went before Congress on April 2, 1917, to deliver his war message, President Woodrow Wilson had pledged all of his nation’s considerable material resources to help the Allies. By the end of World War I in November 1918, some 24 million men had registered under the Selective Service Act. -
Convoy system
In 1917, driven by the spectacular success of the German U-boat submarines and their attacks on Allied and neutral ships at sea, the British Royal Navy introduces a newly created convoy system, whereby all merchant ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean would travel in groups under the protection of the British navy. -
Espionage Age passed
On this day in 1917, some two months after America’s formal entrance into World War I against Germany, the United States Congress passes the Espionage Act. the Espionage Act essentially made it a crime for any person to convey information intended to interfere with the U.S. armed forces prosecution of the war effort or to promote the success of the country’s enemies. -
Flu Epidemic
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I, at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history.The effect of the influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years. The flu virus had a profound virulence, with a mortality rate at 2.5% compared to the previous influenza epidemics, which were less than 0.1%. -
Fourteen Points speech
The Fourteen Points speech of President Woodrow Wilson was an address delivered before a joint meeting of Congress on January 8, 1918, during which Wilson outlined his vision for a stable, long-lasting peace in Europe, the Americas and the rest of the world following World War I. Wilson’s proposal called for the victorious Allies to set unselfish peace terms with the vanquished Central Powers of World War I, including freedom of the seas. -
Russia pulls out of the war
Bolshevik Russia signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, abandoning the Allied war effort and granting independence to its Polish and Baltic territories, the Ukraine, and Finland. German leaders hoped that the formerly Russian territories would fall under their sway, in November 1918 an armistice ended World War I, dooming Germany to demilitarization and Allied domination. -
Sedition Act passed
On May 16, 1918, the United States Congress passes the Sedition Act, a piece of legislation designed to protect America’s participation in World War I. Along with the Espionage Act of the previous year, the Sedition Act was orchestrated largely by A. Mitchell Palmer, the United States attorney general under President Woodrow Wilson. -
Germany signs armistice
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. WW1 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.
