Today In History

July 28, 1914



We would have almost missed it without being aware of it...

One century ago, Austria-Hungary opens the bloody ball of World War I

Turkey, Hungary and Bulgaria?

Just checked that in WW1, over 40 million people died.
In WW2 over 80 million died.

snowman wrote: Turkey, Hungary and Bulgaria?

Just checked that in WW1, over 40 million people died.
In WW2 over 80 million died.

Wikipedia quote : " On 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians fired the first shots in preparation for the invasion of Serbia. "

In fact, i think that the nations were so much on the warpath and the will to fight was so general that eventually, no matter who lit the fuse, everyone wanted to see the firework explode.

Webster says this perfectly:

Theodore Van Kirk, last Enola Gay crew member, dead at 93




The last surviving member of the U.S. crew that dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, hastening the end of Second World War and moving the world into the atomic age, has died.

Theodore Van Kirk died Monday of natural causes at the retirement home where he lived in Georgia, his son Tom Van Kirk said. He was 93.

Van Kirk flew nearly 60 bombing missions, but it was a single mission in the Pacific that secured him a place in history. He was 24 years old when he served as navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb deployed in wartime over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

'The whole World War II experience shows that wars don't settle anything. And atomic weapons don't settle anything. I personally think there shouldn't be any atomic bombs in the world — I'd like to see them all abolished'
- Theodore Van Kirk, last surviving member of the Enola Gay crew





Source:The Canadian Press

August 2, 1914





Corporal Jules André Peugeot , from the 44th Infantry Regiment, is the first French soldier killed in action in what would become the day after for the French, the First World War.

Between him and the soldier Augustin Trébuchon, last French military victim of this conflict, who will fall on November 11, 1918 five minutes before the cease-fire, there will be 1,397,800 French soldiers killed in action.