Whose assassination triggered the start of World War I?
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was shot in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 by the Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia, and the alliance system turned the Balkan crisis into a continental war within five weeks. The Tsar, the Kaiser, and President Wilson all survived 1914 unharmed (although Nicholas II was eventually executed in 1918, after the Russian Revolution).
Read the full facts →World War I was a global war fought from 1914 to 1918, primarily between the Allied Powers (France, Britain, Russia, Italy, the United States and others) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria). It killed approximately 20 million people and reshaped the political map of Europe and the Middle East.
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