This week marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World War One. Here are 100 facts
about that fateful war, 100 years after its beginning.
Ramp Up To War
1) The final trigger for
the war came on June 28th when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie were gunned down
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| Archduke Ferdinand |
2) “The Black Hand,” a
Serbian terrorist group, planned the murders
3) Serbian nationalist and
Black Hand member, Gavrilo Princip was the assassin
4) The war had actually
been a long time in coming; spanning four decades of diplomatic conflicts
between Italy, France, Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia concerning
political issues, the economy, and unresolved territorial disputes involving
the Balkans
Players
5) World War One was known
as “The Great War”; The War to End All Wars; The War of the Nations, and is
abbreviated as WWI
6) Great Britain and the British Empire declared war on Germany after the Central Powers invaded Belgium
7) The Central Powers were
made up of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria
8) The Allied Powers were
made up of Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Japan, Rumania, Serbia,
Belgium, Portugal, Greece, Montenegro, and, eventually, the United States
9) This was the first
global conflict
War Facts
10) WWI lasted for 4 years
- from 1914 to 1918
11) WWI changed the way
war was fought and influenced the way future wars would be fought
12) 65 million soldiers
fought during WWI
13) It was the sixth
deadliest conflict in world history
14) Soldiers came from
over 40 countries and numerous colonies
15) Russia marshaled 12
million fighting troops: this was the largest army in the war
16) Of those 12 million,
more than ¾ of the men were killed, wounded or MIA
17) More than 10 million
soldiers died; 6 million for the Allies and 4 million for the Central
Powers
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| Mata Hari |
18) That equates to over
6,000 deaths every day during the war
19) Another 21 million
were wounded
20) Mata Hari’s name was
Margaretha Zelle, a Dutch exotic dancer
21) She was executed in
France in 1917, accused of being a spy
Air Warfare
22) WWI was the first war
to be fought in the air
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| Air War |
23) Over 65,000 aircraft
had been produced by the end of the war
24) Thirty-eight American
volunteers fought in the French Air Service years before the U.S. entered the
war
25) Their unit was known
as the Lafayette Escadrille: One of the best fighting units on the Western
Front
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| Zeppelin |
26) The Escadrille men flew more
than 3,000 missions
27) Germany built 123
Zeppelin airships
28) Zeppelins flew more
than 100 bombing runs on Great Britain
29) The title “Flying Ace”
was bestowed on a pilot after he had downed 5 enemy aircraft
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| The Red Baron |
30) The Allies Top Ace was
Rene Fonck of France who shot down 75 enemy planes
31) Eddie Rickenbacker was
America’s Top Ace with 26 kills
32) Manfred Von
Richthofen, better known as “The Red Baron,” was Germany’s Top Ace with 80
kills
33) Richthofen died April 21, 1918 after
being shot down near Amiens
34) WWI was the first time aircraft carriers were used in a war
Naval Warfare
35) WWI was the last war
to feature defining naval battles
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| German U-Boat |
36) In the Battle of
Jutland, over 250 ships took part in the fight
37) Germany built over 400
U-boats during the war
38) Of those 400, Germany lost on 178
U-boats during the war
39) The Central Powers sank
over 5,500 Allied and neutral ships
40) Most were sunk in the
English Channel
RMS Lusitania
41) The most famous ship
to be sunk during the war was the RMS Lusitania in 1915
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| RMS Lusitania |
42) A German sub sank her on May 7, 1915
43) A total of 1,198
people died when the Lusitania sank
44) 128 were Americans
45) The Lusitania went
down within 18 minutes
46) This single act
propelled the U.S. into the war
46) The United States
entered the war on April 6, 1917
47) During those 18 months, over
116,000 Americans were killed
48) And 204,000 American soldiers
were injured
Ground Forces
49) 1.2 million soldiers
died during the Battle of the Somme
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| Ssgt. York |
50) 58,000 British
soldiers died during the first day of the Somme Battle
51) The most decorated
American solider of the war was Alvin York who received a medal of honor for
leading an attack on a German gun nest; killing 28 German soldiers and capturing
another 32
52) The Western Front was made up of 466 miles,
which stretched from the English Channel to Switzerland
53) Over 2,500 miles of
trenches were dug on The Front
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| In the Trenches |
54) For every 4 inches of
trench dug, there was one soldier to defend it
55) By the end of the war,
over 200,000 men had lost their lives in the trenches
56) Trench foot was a
major problem during the war
57) The British army had
over 20,000 cases reported during the first year
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| Battle of Verdun |
58) The trenches were
crawling with rats and lice
59) In 1916, the Battle of
Verdun resulted in over one million causalities – all within a 10-month time frame
60) The Germans were the
first to use flame-throwers in the war
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| WWI Tank |
61) The flames could go as
far as 130 feet
62) Tanks were first used
in WWI
63) Tanks were originally
called “landships”
64) The first tank prototype
was named “Little Willie”
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| Little Willie |
65) British tanks were
designated as male and female: male tanks had cannons; female tanks had guns
66) This was the first war
where self-powered machine gun use was widespread
67) Artillery weapons were
responsible for 70% of all battlefield deaths
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| Big Bertha |
68) Artillery barrages
could be heard for hundreds of miles
69) The French had 75mm
guns called “Devil Guns” by the Germans
70) Germany had a 48-ton
Howitzer nicknamed “Big Bertha”
71) Big Bertha could fire
a 2,0050 pound shell almost 10 miles
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| Chemical Weapons |
72) Germany had a total of
13 of these guns
73) WWI was the first time
chemical weapons were used in war
74) France was the first
country to use tear gas against the enemy in 1914
75) The following year,
Germany was the first country to use poisonous chlorine gas against the enemy
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| Shell Shock |
76) Over 30 different
poisonous gases were used during the war
77) Over 1-million
soldiers were gassed during the fighting
78) Of those, lose to 92,000
died
79) At the end of the conflict,
most countries signed treaties, which outlawed the use of chemical weapons
80) More than
half-a-million men died from mustard gas during the war
81) After the war over
80,000 British soldiers were diagnosed as suffering from shell shock
82) By the end of the war
over 250,000 British soldiers had undergone at least one amputation
Disease
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| Spanish Influenza |
83) The Spanish Influenza
epidemic spread far and wide due in part, to WWI
84) By 1918, the U.S. Army
had lost 60% of its soldiers to the flu
85) The U.S. Navy lost 40% of their men to the influenza
86) When the flu outbreak
ended, at least a third of the soldiers had died from it
Other Causalities
87) Civilian deaths were
over 6.6 million during the war
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| Aerschot |
88) German soldiers shot
and killed 150 civilians at Aerschot as part of their war strategy to incite
terror in the public
89) Russia lost over 2
million civilians
90) During the four years
of the war, 11% of France’s residents were either killed or wounded
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| Execution of Edith Cavell |
91) A British nurse, Edith
Cavell assisted 200 Allied soldiers in escaping from Belgium during the war
92) The Germans had her
executed by a firing squad
93) Cavell’s death helped turn
public sentiment against the Germans and the Central Powers
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| Sergeant Stubby |
94) Over 1 million dogs
died on WWI battlefields while scouting, acting as sentries or carrying messages
95) Dogs were also used to
lay telegraph lines
96) The most decorated
military dog during the war was Sergeant Stubby, a bull terrier mix
97) Stubby took part in
17 battles and captured a German spy
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| WWI Poster |
98) The war resulted in
the loss of 8 million military horses
99) Over half-a-million
carrier pigeons were used to carry messages along the front
100) After the war, a total
of four empires collapsed: Germany, Ottoman, Austro-Hungary, and Russia
~ Joy
