June 28, 2014, is the 100th anniversary of the political assassination in Sarajevo, Serbia of the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophia. It was the spark that started World War I, the war that was widely called “the war to end all wars”, because of the unendurable mutual mass slaughter of an entire generation of young European men.
It was four years of brutal war, leading to the fall of three European empires and a revolution in what would become the Soviet Union. The past 100 years have seen another World War and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, but much of present-day Europe is based on the lines drawn following the conflict. The link below shows a map of Europe in 1914 and what it looks like today. Pretty remarkable.