A pigeon was awarded France’s Croix de Guerre.
Wounded and missing a leg, Cher Ami delivered the Lost Battalion’s note in 1918, saving 194 American soldiers from their own artillery.
The events
- Cher Ami saves the Lost Battalion1918 · Argonne Forest. In October 1918 a surrounded American battalion came under fire from its own guns. The pigeon Cher Ami, shot through the breast and losing a leg, reached headquarters with a note; the shelling stopped and 194 men survived.
- 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.
More amazing facts
- 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.
- 1918 The Spanish flu did not come from Spain.
- 1918 · 2012 The last veteran of World War I died in 2012, the year the Higgs boson was found.