28 June 1914
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo. His death sparked World War I, which drew 38 countries and millions of people into it.
Franz Ferdinand was the nephew of Emperor Franz Joseph. After the emperor's son committed suicide and the emperor's brother—Ferdinand's father—died in 1896, the 33-year-old Archduke became heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.
By this time, he had a military education and had circumnavigated the globe, visiting Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, and Japan. He then published "Travel Diary" in Vienna.
In 1900, with the permission of his uncle the Emperor, Ferdinand married a beautiful Czech countess in a morganatic, that is, unequal, marriage. Sofia Hotek.
As for politics, the uncle-emperor kept his nephew-heir at arm's length from governing the empire. This was especially true since Franz Ferdinand was a supporter of reform. For example, he hatched a plan to transform Austria-Hungary into a "United States of Greater Austria"—a triune state. Austria-Hungary-Slavia under the rule of the Habsburgs. He believed that the transformation of the "dualistic" state into a "trialistic" one would reduce the level of interethnic conflict.
28 June 1914 During the Archduke's visit to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, annexed by Austria-Hungary, the Mlada Bosna organization, manipulated by Serbian intelligence (the Archduke's planned reforms threatened the idea of uniting the southern Slavs under the wing of a Greater Serbia), decided to assassinate him. It worked on the second try, by accident. The driver lingered just where one of the conspirators was located— Gavrilo Princip. Princip first shot Sophie in the stomach, then Franz Ferdinand in the neck. The couple died almost immediately.
The shot fired by a Serbian terrorist triggered a chain of events that would cast a shadow over the entire 20th century. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia supported Serbia. The war began. World War I, in which at least 14 million peopleWell, the collapse of empires, revolutions, and resentment later became the prologue to World War II.
