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Assassination of Franz Ferdinand
The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's South Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Yugoslavia. The conspirators' motives were consistent with the movement that later became known as Young Bosnia. -
Germany invades Belgium
To avoid the French fortifications along the French-German border, the troops had to cross Belgium and attack the French Army by the north. Of course, Belgians refused to let them through, so the Germans decided to enter by force and invaded Belgium on Aug. 4, 1914. -
Battle of Marne
During World War I by the French army and the British Expeditionary Force against the advancing Germans who had invaded Belgium and northeastern France and were within 30 miles of Paris. -
Gallipoli Campaign
At dawn on 25 April 1915, Allied troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula in Ottoman Turkey. The Gallipoli campaign was the land-based element of a strategy intended to allow Allied ships to pass through the Dardanelles, capture Constantinople and ultimately knock Ottoman Turkey out of the war. -
Battle of Verdun
World War I engagement in which the French repulsed a major German offensive. It was one of the longest, bloodiest, and most-ferocious battles of the war; French casualties amounted to about 400,000, German ones to about 350,000. Some 300,000 were killed. -
Battle of the Somme
The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme Offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British Empire and French Third Republic against the German Empire. -
Death of Grigori Rasputin
Rasputin was murdered during the early morning on 30 December 1916 at the home of Felix Yusupov. He died of three gunshot wounds, one of which was a close-range shot to his forehead. -
Tsar Nicholas abdicates
Tsar Nicholas II abdicated from the Russian throne. This brought to an end the Romanov dynasty that had ruled Russia for over three hundred years -
Lenin's return to from exile
Vladimir Lenin, leader of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party, returns to Petrograd after a decade of exile to take the reins of the Russian Revolution. After his exile ended in 1900, Lenin went to Western Europe, where he continued his revolutionary activity -
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
By the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russia recognized the independence of Ukraine, Georgia and Finland; gave up Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to Germany and Austria-Hungary; and ceded Kars, Ardahan and Batum to Turkey -
Armistice ending WWI
After more than four years of horrific fighting and the loss of millions of lives, the guns on the Western Front fell silent. Although fighting continued elsewhere, the armistice between Germany and the Allies was the first step to ending World War I. -
Treaty of Versailles signed
The Treaty of Versailles was the primary treaty produced by the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I. it was signed by the Allied and associated powers and by Germany in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles and went into effect on January 10, 1920. -
US declares war on Germany
United States Congress declared war upon Germany, hours after Germany declared war on the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan.