The first countries to put their clocks forward for summer were wartime Germany and Austria-Hungary, on 30 April 1916.

1916

Before that, only two small Canadian towns had tried daylight saving, in 1908.

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The event

• World War I1914–1918 · Sarajevo. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 drew the great powers into a war of the Entente against Germany and its allies. It killed millions and brought down the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires.

20th century

More amazing facts

• 1915 · 1916 The tank is called a tank for secrecy's sake.
• 1915 · 1916 Russia's Tsar Tank was tested in 1915, a year before the first British tanks went into battle on the Somme.
• 1917 · 1983 Even after confessing, one of the Cottingley cousins would not fully back down.
• 1917 The 'sealed train' that took Lenin from Switzerland across Germany in 1917 was not truly sealed: passengers got off, for example to spend a night in Frankfurt.
• 1917 The October Revolution happened in November: 25 October 1917 in the Julian calendar Russia then used was 7 November in the Gregorian one, so the USSR celebrated 'October' every 7 November.
• 1917 The cruiser Aurora never shelled the Winter Palace: on 25 October 1917 it fired a single blank shot as the signal for the assault.

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