25 FACTS ABOUT WORLD WAR 1

I thought maybe most of you would of liked something for remembrance day. Here are a few facts about World War 1 and the reason behind the day where we all share a minutes silence.

•  1 - Definition: World War 1 was a military conflict lasting from 1914 to 1918 which involved nearly all the biggest powers of the world

•  2 – World War 1 involved 2 opposing alliances – the Allies and the Central Powers

•  3 – The countries of the Allies included Russia, France, British Empire, Italy, United States, Japan, Rumania, Serbia, Belgium, Greece, Portugal and Montenegro

•  4 – The countries of the Central Powers included Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria

•  5 – World War 1 was triggered on 28 June 1914 by the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his pregnant wife Sophie

•  6- Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was the nephew of Emperor Franz Josef and heir to the throne of Austria and Hungary

•  7 – The assassination took place in in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina

• 8 – assassination was planned by a Serbian terrorist group, called The Black Hand and the man who shot Franz Ferdinand and his wife was a Bosnian revolutionary named Gavrilo Princip

•  9 – Causes of World War 1:
• There was a tangle of alliances made between countries, to maintain a balance of power in Europe, which brought about the scale of the conflict
• Bosnian Crisis – Austria-Hungary took over the former Turkish province of Bosnia in 1909 angering Serbia
• Countries were building their military forces, arms and battleships
• Countries wanted to regain lost territories from previous conflicts and build empires
• Moroccan Crisis – Germans were protesting in 1911 against the French possession of Morocco

•  10 – Major Leaders of World War 1 included Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tsar Nicholas II, Prince Alexander of Serbia, Sir Edward Grey British Foreign Secretary, President Wilson U.S. President, H. H. Asquith and David Lloyd George

• 11 – WW1 included the first known use of chemical weapons (mustard Gas)

•  12 - The sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 bought the US into the war

• 13 – US entered the war on April 6, 1917

•  14 – 65 million troops were mobilized during WW1

• 15 - 8 million troops died

•  16 – 21 million troops were wounded

•  17 – 58,000 British soldiers were lost on the first day at the Battle of the Somme

•  18 – Other names for World War 1 include ‘The War to End All Wars’, The War of the Nations and ‘The Great War’

• 19 – By the end of the war there were 250,000 wounded British soldiers who suffered total or partial amputation

•  20 – The U.S. was in the war in actual combat for only seven and a half months during which time 116,000 were killed and 204,000 were wounded.

• 21 – During the course of the War War 1 approx 11% of Frances’s entire population was killed or wounded.

•  22 - Battle of Verdun, 1916, resulted in over a million casualties in ten months.

•  23 – Over 200,000 men died in the trenches of WW1

•  24 – Trenches were infested with millions of rats, frogs and lice

•  25 – 80,000 British troops suffered from shell-shock

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