6/28/14

A few days late for this, but 100 years ago Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were shot to death in Sarajevo by Princip, a member of the Black Hand. This was of course the immediate cause of the Great War, which started a month later on 7/28/1914.  While that war may seem remote to some, it is obviously hugely important to making the contemporary world, with global effects rippling out from a few pistol shots in a far away city.

As it happened I visited the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna a couple of years ago, where they have a whole room full of artifacts from the shooting, including the car, Archduke Franz's coat, and the pistols of the Black Hand agents captured following the attack.