Gavrilo Princip was not eating a sandwich when the archduke's car arrived; that detail was invented in 2001.
The truth: Franz Ferdinand's car took a wrong turn and stalled outside Schiller's delicatessen, right where Princip stood.
The event
More amazing facts
- 1914 Passenger pigeons once numbered in the billions, but the last one, Martha, died on 1 September 1914 — a month after World War I began.
- 1914 · 1928 The cheapest toll in Panama Canal history was 36 cents, paid in 1928 by writer Richard Halliburton, who swam it. The fee was set by his weight: 140 pounds.
- 1914 On one stretch of the front, the Christmas truce of 1914 was struck for the sake of the post: Belgian soldiers asked the Germans to pass their letters on to families living in occupied Belgium.
- 1914 · 1915 Winnie-the-Pooh is named after a real bear brought to London by World War I. In August 1914 Harry Colebourn, a Canadian cavalry vet, bought a cub from a hunter and named her Winnipeg; from 1915 she lived at London Zoo.
- 1914 Britain's King George V was a first cousin of both Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1914 Britain and Russia went to war against Germany — two cousins against the third.
- 1914 The Panama Canal opened in a world already at war. The first ship passed through on 15 August 1914, two and a half weeks after the First World War began, and the opening was a low-key affair.