The Assassination of Arch Duke Francis Ferdinand on 28th June 1914.

When Ferdinand was in Sarajevo, in the first part of his visit he had a bomb thrown at his car by an anti-Austrian terrorist group of people called the “black hand gang” who hated Austrians because they thought that they were always trying to take over, at him and his wife, Sophie.  But the bomb rebounded of the side of the car and hit an office building behind them, injuring just one man inside.

In the second part of their journey, Francis and his wife were not so lucky.  The “Black Hand Gang” had set themselves up around the area Francis and Sophie were driving.  As they carried on driving, there was a “Black Hand Gang” member, called Gavrilo Princip(Serb nationalist) , who shot several bullets with his revolver at Francis Ferdinand and Sophie.  Princip shot both of them standing on the corner of Franz Josef Strasse.  Princip then jumped into the river next to him, but he survived and was to go to court.

After a trial in Sarajevo, Princip was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment, on October 28th, 1914, the maximum penalty allowed for a person under the age of twenty on the day of his crime.  Probably ill before his imprisonment, Princip underwent amputation of an arm because of tuberculosis of the bone and died in a hospital near his prison.

A month later after the assassination by the Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip at Sarajevo, World War I began with Austria’s declaration of the war against Serbia.