A wrong turn and a sandwich break gave a young man his moment. The world paid for it.

One Shot in Sarajevo: How a Single Assassination Started World War I

A Serbian nationalist's bullet kills a Habsburg heir and ignites a continent

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 triggered World War I within weeks, killing 17 million people and reshaping the entire 20th century.

On the morning of June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand — heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne — and his wife Sophie rode in an open car through Sarajevo, capital of the recently annexed province of Bosnia. A group of six conspirators had positioned themselves along the motorcade route, armed with bombs and pistols provided by a Serbian secret society called the Black Hand.

The first assassination attempt — a bomb thrown at the Archduke's car — bounced off and exploded under a following vehicle. Franz Ferdinand continued to a reception at City Hall, then insisted on visiting the injured officers in hospital. His driver, unfamiliar with the changed route, turned down the wrong street.

By extraordinary coincidence, the car stopped directly in front of 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, one of the conspirators, who had given up and stopped at a deli to buy a sandwich. From a distance of five feet, Princip fired twice. Franz Ferdinand was hit in the jugular vein, Sophie in the abdomen. Both died within the hour.

Within six weeks, most of Europe was at war. Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia triggered Russia's mobilization, which triggered Germany's war declaration, which triggered Fra…

💡 Gavrilo Princip was 19 years and 11 months old at the time of the assassination — just young enough to avoid the death penalty under Austro-Hungarian law.