Modern Era · Europe · War

1914

Franz Ferdinand shot in Sarajevo

June 28, 1914

After a comically botched morning bombing, the Austrian archduke's driver took a wrong turn and rolled straight past a Bosnian Serb teenager named Gavrilo Princip. He fired twice at point-blank range. The heir and his pregnant wife died in the back seat. Within six weeks Europe was at war, and the old world was finished.