The Accidental Start of WWI

The Assassination That Started World War I Was Basically a Series of Accidents

June 28, 1914. Sarajevo, Bosnia. A handful of teenage revolutionaries are trying to change history. Not by starting a war. Just by killing one guy: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne.

Their motivations weren’t global. They didn’t want trenches and mustard gas. They wanted independence for Slavic people living under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The guy they hated most? Franz Ferdinand. Never mind that he was actually in favor of giving Slavs more rights. In their eyes, he still represented the empire, and made him a target. Fun Fact: Franz Ferdinand wasn’t supposed to be heir to the throne. He only got bumped up after his cousin Prince Rudolf died in a murder-suicide pact and his father renounced his claim.

The assassins were part of a secret Serbian nationalist group called the Black Hand. Their plan was to station a line of guys along the Archduke’s motorcade route. When the open-top car drove by, someone would throw a bomb. Or shoot him. Or both. They hadn’t really worked out the finer points.

The first assassin chickened out. Just stood there as the car passed, clutching his grenade and wondering how it had come to this.

The second guy had slightly more follow-through. He tossed his bomb toward the Archduke’s car, but it bounced off the back and exploded under the car behind. Franz Ferdinand was unharmed. A few officers were injured. The would-be assassin swallowed a cyanide pill and jumped into a river to make a dramatic escape. The pill was expired. The river was about a foot deep. He threw up and got arrested.

At this point, things were unraveling fast. The rest of the assassins either lost their nerve or wandered off, assuming the mission was a bust. Franz Ferdinand, unfazed by someone trying to blow him…up, insisted on continuing his visit and even decided to go to the hospital to visit the injured men from the bomb attack.

This is where fate steps in, looking for trouble.

The Archduke’s driver didn’t get the message that the route had changed. So he kept following the original plan. A few minutes later, someone realized the mistake and told him to turn around. The car stopped, tried to reverse, and stalled in front of a corner café.

Standing outside that café was Gavrilo Princip.

He was one of the original assassins. After the failed attempt earlier, he had walked off to sulk and grab a sandwich. The guy was literally mid-snack when the Archduke’s car pulled up right in front of him.

Princip pulled out a pistol and fired two shots. One hit Franz Ferdinand. The other hit his wife, Sophie. Both died within minutes.

That’s it. Mission complete. Not through elite training or intricate planning. Just a failed mission, a wrong turn, and a guy with a sandwich.

The aftermath was like lighting a match in a fireworks factory. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the attack and issued an ultimatum that was designed to be rejected. Serbia didn’t cave. Russia backed Serbia. Germany backed Austria-Hungary. France and Britain got pulled in soon after. The war was on.

None of this was what the Black Hand had in mind. They wanted to shake things up in the Balkans, maybe spark some rebellion. Instead, they cracked open the century’s deadliest war. Over 16 million people would die in the years that followed because a parade route changed and a 19-year-old happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.

The dude at the center of it all? Gavrilo Princip. A revolutionary with shaky hands, an empty stomach, and no idea what he had just set in motion.

🎯 Fun Fact

A bolt of lightning can hit 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which means it’s literally hotter than the surface of the sun. The sun clocks in at around 10,000 degrees, so next time you see lightning rip across the sky, just know you’re watching a split-second blast of heat five times more intense than our local star.

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