On June 28, 1914, an 18-year-old student named Gavrilo Princip fired a pistol in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and changed the world.
Princip, a Serbian nationalist enraged by the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Austro-Hungarian empire, had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, presumptive heir to that empire's throne, and his wife, the duchess of Hohenberg, as they rode in a motorcade. Ferdinand was aware of the danger — earlier that day he had deflected a bomb hurled at him by another would-be assassin, The Times reported. (Many contemporary accounts say the bomb actually bounced off the car.) He was traveling to visit people injured in that blast when he was killed.
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