June 28 in History

On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie were shot dead in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The killer was Gavrilo Princip, a young Bosnian Serb nationalist. The assassination set off a diplomatic crisis that, within about five weeks, drew the major powers of Europe into the First World War.

The Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919, formally ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied powers after World War I. Negotiated in Paris and signed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, it redrew the map of Europe, imposed heavy penalties on Germany, and created the League of Nations. Its terms were bitterly resented in Germany, and historians still debate how much they contributed to the instability that followed.