Wednesday Open Line


On this date one century ago, what was perhaps history’s most consequential assassination took place to surprisingly little notice at the time. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne, was killed along with his wife by a Serbian nationalist. After a month of bluster and failed diplomacy, by early August 1914, most of Europe was at war, one that the United States joined in 1917. When the smoke cleared in 1918, and the Ottoman, Russian, Austria-Hungarian and German empires had fallen, more than 8.5 million people had died out of some 37.5 million casualties. The last American veteran of the so-called Great War died just over three years ago, but there remain more than 21 million living veterans in the U.S., including just under 21,000 from between the world wars. Profile America is in its 17th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.