1914 - the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
We chose 1914 as a significant date because it was when the heir to Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated.
On 28th June, 1914, the Archduke and his wife set off on a tour of Sarajevo which at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Various attempts were made on the Archduke’s life but they all failed until Gavrillo Princip fired his pistol at the Archduke and killed him (and his wife with a second shot).
The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand is an important event in history because it set off a chain reaction of events that led to the First World War. If the Archduke had not been assassinated, maybe war wouldn’t have broken out in 1914. In the end the First World War wrecked much of Europe and led to the deaths of 17 million people and some people say the first shot was fired on that day in Sarajevo.