Great War

The **Great War**, later known as **World War I**, was a conflict involving all the great European powers and their colonies throughout the world, as well as the United States. It was also a period of history from 1914 to 1918, part of modern times, following the Gilded Age and preceding the Jazz Age.

## Timeline

### 1914

**June 28:** Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary by Gravilo Princip--Sarajevo

**July 28:** The Great War begins as Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.

**August 4:** Germany rapes Belgium.

**August 23:** Angelic warriors assist British soldiers at the Battle of Mons.

**September:** The *African Queen* sets off down the Ulanga River.

**September 5-12:** First Battle of the Marne.

**October 5:** First manifesto of fascism proclaimed--Italy

### 1915

Tom Swift invents an aerial warship for the U.S. Government.

Salesman Gregor Samsa is transformed into an enormous insect--Prague

**January 18:** Ernest Shackleton's *Endurance* is stuck in Antarctic ice.

**January 19:** Zeppelin raids on Britain begin.

**February 19:** Battle for Gallipoli begins.

Albert Einstein formulates the Theory of Relativity.

**April 14:** Bruce Wayne born--Gotham City, New Jersey

**May 7:** RMS *Lusitania* sunk by a German U-boat.

### 1916

**February 21:** Battle of Verdun

1916-1918 T.E. Lawrence assists freedom fighters in Arabia

**March 9:** Pancho Villa (1878-1923) raids New Mexico.

**February 29:** Kal-El born--Kryptonopolis, Krypton

**April 23:** Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland

**June 10:** Morpheus, King of Dreams, is imprisoned by a British occultist.

**July 1:** Battle of the Somme begins.

**August 29:** Paul Von Hindenberg becomes German Chief of Staff.

**September:** James "Biggles" Bigglesworth flies his first combat mission for the RAF--France

**September 16:** Tanks are first used in warfare, by the British at the Battle of the Somme.

**September 17:** Manfred von Richtofen, the Red Baron (b. 1892), shoots down his first enemy plane--Cambrai, France

**November 18:** Battle of the Somme ends with no victor and more than a million casualties.

**December 29:** Gregori Rasputin (b. 1870), advisor to the Czarina, is poisoned and shot and stabbed and drowned.

### 1917

**January 16:** Zimmerman Telegram sent.

**March 15:** Czar Nicholas II abdicates.

**April 3:** Vladimir Lenin arrives at the Finland Station.

**April 4:** The United States declares war on Germany to make the world safe for Democracy.

**June 25:** The Yanks arrive in France.

**August 17:** Lois Lane born.

**October 15:** Mata Hari (b. 1876) executed by a French firing squad.

**November 7:** Bolshevik Revolution begins. John Reed covers the 10 days that shook the world.

**October:** Jay Gatsby (b. 1892) meets Daisy Buchanan.

### 1918

**January:** First outbreak of the Spanish Flu, which will go on to kill between 3 and 6 percent of Earth's humans.

**January 8:** President Woodrow Wilson issues his 14 Points.

**February 21:** Death of the last Carolina Parakeet--Cincinnati, Ohio

**March 3:** Leon Trotsky signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany.

**April 21:** The Red Baron shot down over Amiens, France.

**July 8:** Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), wounded on the Italian front, sent to a hospital in Milan to recuperate.

**August 18:** Founding of the Thule Society, an occult group that later launches the Nazi Party--Munich

**September:** Edward Cullen (b. 1901) is turned into a vampire to save him from the Spanish flu.

**September 10:** Rin Tin Tin (d. 1932) born in war-torn Lorraine.

**October 8:** Sergeant Alvin York single-handedly kills 25 German soldiers and captures 132 more--Argonne Forest, France

**October 14:** Corporal Adolf Hitler temporarily blinded by a British gas attack--Ypres, Belgium

The Land That Time Forgot discovered near Antarctica by a German U-boat.

**November 11:** Armistice Day

**November 11:** Birth of Benjamin Button, aged 87 years.