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A German U-Boat torpedoes the British passenger liner Lusitania off the Irish coast. It sinks in 18 minutes, drowning 1,201 people, including 128 Americans. President Woodrow Wilson subsequently sends four diplomatic protests to Germany. This hurt Americas security as any of there boats could be attacked at anytime. -
American voters re-elect President Woodrow Wilson who had campaigned on the slogan, "He kept us out of war." -
Plans for an alliance between Germany and Mexico against the United States. According to the scheme, Germany would provide tactical support while Mexico would benefit by expanding into the American Southwest, retrieving territories that had once been part of Mexico. The Zimmermann telegram is passed along by the British and given to the Americans and is then made public, causing an outcry from interventionists in the U.S. -
The United States of America declares war on Germany after they sank a passenger boat killing 128 Americans. -
The first American troops land in France. -
The Battle of Belleau Wood involving the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division begins. During the three-week fight against the Germans, Americans experience their first significant battlefield casualties with 5,000 killed. This was a big lost for the people of the U.S who lost there family and friends. -
After pausing to regroup and resupply, Allied armies resume their eastward march as the U.S. 1st Army and newly formed U.S. 2nd Army attack remaining German positions along the Meuse River near southern Belgium, while the Belgians and British move toward Ghent and Mons in Belgium. -
At 5:10 am, in a railway car at Compiegne, France, the Germans sign the Armistice which is effective at 11 am--the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Fighting continues all along the Western Front until precisely 11 o'clock, with 2,000 casualties experienced that day by all sides. the U.S can bring there troops home and start their trade routes again. -
At the Palace of Versailles in France, a German delegation signs the Treaty formally ending the war. Its 230 pages contain terms that have little in common with Wilson's Fourteen Points as the Germans had hoped. Germans back home react with mass demonstrations against the perceived harshness, especially clauses that assess sole blame for the war on Germany.