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The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand .
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew of Emperor Franz Josef and heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is shot to death along with his wife by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on this day in 1914. -
U-Boat warfare begins .
The first German U-Boat campaign of the war begins with unrestricted attacks against merchant and passenger ships in the waters around the British Isles. -
Lusitania sunk .
A German U-Boat torpedoes the British passenger liner Lusitania off the Irish coast. It sinks in 18 minutes, drowning 1,201 persons, including 128 Americans. President Woodrow Wilson subsequently sends four diplomatic protests to Germany. -
Battle of Verdun .
On the Western Front, the German 5th Army attacks the French 2nd Army north of the historic city of Verdun, following a nine-hour artillery bombardment. The Germans under Chief of the General Staff, Erich Falkenhayn, seek to "bleed" the French Army to death by targeting the cherished city. -
Batle of somme .
The British Army suffers the worst single-day death toll in its history as 18,800 soldiers are killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The losses come as 13 attacking divisions encounter German defenses that are still intact despite the seven-day bombardment designed to knock them out. -
Woodrow elected again .
American voters re-elect President Woodrow Wilson who had campaigned on the slogan, "He kept us out of war." -
Zimmerman telegram .
The British intercept a telegram sent by Alfred Zimmermann in the German Foreign Office to the German embassies in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City. Its message outlines plans for an alliance between Germany and Mexico against the United States. -
America enters the war .
The United States of America declares war on Germany. -
British tank attack .
Soviet Russia signs an armistice with Germany. With Russia's departure from the Eastern Front, forty-four German divisions become available to be redeployed to the Western Front in time for Ludendorff's Spring Offensive. -
Fourteen points .
President Woodrow Wilson outlines an elaborate peace plan to the U.S. Congress containing Fourteen Points as the basis of its establishment. -
Allied Counter-offensives .
The U.S. 1st Army and French 4th Army begin a joint offensive to clear out the strongly defended corridor between the Meuse River and the Argonne Forest. Here, the Germans do not fall back and the battle soon resembles action from earlier years in the war. -
Armistice ends fighting .
At 5:10 am, in a railway car at Compiègne, 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.
