Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was assassinated on the 28th of June, 1914. The archduke had been touring Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, when a man named Gavrilo Princep walked up and shot him. Gavrilo Princep was a member of the Black Hand, a Serbian Nationalist group striving towards independence. The death of the archduke by a Serbian gave Austria-Hungary the perfect excuse to declare war on Serbia, something that it had wanted to do for a while. Due to a tangle of alliances and nationalist values, many of the leading European nations of the 20th century were pulled into the first world war, which would result in the deaths of millions and the eventual rise of the Nazis in Germany (arguably the cause of World War 2).
In 1863, Franz Ferdinand was born in Graz, Austria to Archduke Karl Ludwig, the nephew of Emperor Franz Josef. Due to numerous family deaths in 1880s and 90s, Karl Ludwig ended up second-in-line to the throne of Austria-Hungary, behind the emperor's own son. With the death of the emperor's son, Karl Ludwig became heir-apparent. Of course, continuing with the tragic trend set by the rest of the family, Karl Ludwig died as well, which made his son, Franz Ferdinand, the new heir.
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| Archduke Franz Ferdinand |
Franz Ferdinand had a relatively enjoyable private life, with a loving wife and three well-behaved children. The Archduke's public life was a bit more stressful, as his ideas and goals were extremely unpopular with the other nobility and commoners. Namely, his main source of unpopularity was due to his belief that Slavs should have as much say in the government as Germans and Magyars. As one might imagine, the Germans and Magyars did not agree.
In the last week of his life, June of 1914, Franz Ferdinand had been invited to Sarajevo, Bosnia, by General Oskar Potiorek. The Archduke was supposed to inspect military manuevers and have an overall diagnostic done on the army. On his arrival in Sarajevo and drive to the city hall, a hand grenade was thrown at his motorcade by a Black Hand member, who had been instructed to do so by a fellow member named Gavrilo Princep. Nobody was harmed and the assassin attempted to flee the scene. Knowing he would soon be caught, the assassin took a poison pill to silence himself. Well, the poison didn't work. Preferring to die for his Serbian cause, the assassin then jumped into a river to drown himself. The water ended up being too shallow to drown in, and authorities caught the would-be murderer before he could try something else.
Understandably, Gavrilo Princep was feeling pretty bad about the way the assassination turned out; his henchman had been caught and the Black Hand was going to be exposed within days. So, while mulling over his eventual demise, Gavrilo went to a deli. By sheer coincidence, Archduke Franz Ferdinand's car broke down right in front of the deli that Gavrilo was eating in. Gavrilo, noticing this, promptly walked outside and shot the heir of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Outraged and noting that the Black Hand was a Serbian Nationalist group, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Following multiple alliance treaties, World War I had begun.
So, by sheer coincidence, the Archduke was killed and World War I began. World War I would kill millions, and the resulting Treaty of Versailles set the stage for the rise of the Nazis, World War II, the Holocaust, and by extension, nearly every single problem in the Middle East since. Millions died, nations collapsed, and the world was changed forever because of one unlucky day in the life of an Archduke.
Source: Sources: http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/ferdinand.htm
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