Portal:World War I
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 World War I (abbreviated WWI), also known as the First World War, the Great War and The War to End All Wars was a global military conflict that took place mostly in Europe between 1914 and 1918. The main combatants were the Allied Powers, led by France, the Russian Empire, the British Empire, Serbia, and later Italy, Romania and the United States, who fought against the Central Powers: Austria-Hungary, the German Empire, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. Much of the fighting in World War I took place along the Western Front, within a system of opposing manned trenches and fortifications (separated by a "no man's land") running from the North Sea to the border of Switzerland. On the Eastern Front, the vast eastern plains and limited rail network prevented a trench warfare stalemate from developing, although the scale of the conflict was just as large. Hostilities also occurred on and under the sea and — for the first time — in the air. More than nine million soldiers died on the various battlefields, and millions more civilians perished. The war caused the disintegration of four empires: the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian. Germany lost its overseas empire, and states such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were created, or recreated, as in the cases of Lithuania and Poland. This contributed to a decisive break with the world order that had emerged after the Napoleonic Wars, which was modified by the mid-19th century’s nationalistic revolutions. The results of World War I would also be important factors in the development of World War II just over two decades later.  The Battle of Gallipoli (sometimes referred to as the first D-Day) took place on the Turkish peninsula of Gallipoli from April 1915 to January 1916 during the First World War. A joint British and French operation was mounted in order to eventually capture the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul). The attempt failed, with heavy casualties on both sides. In Turkey the campaign is known as the Çanakkale Savaşları, after the province of Çanakkale. In the United Kingdom it is called the Dardanelles Campaign or Gallipoli, and in France, Australia, New Zealand and Newfoundland it is usually known as the "Gallipoli Campaign".  The Paris Gun (German: Parisgeschütz) was the name of an artillery piece with which the Germans bombarded Paris during World War I. This oversized railway gun was used from March to August 1918. When it was used, Parisians believed they were being bombed by an airship, because neither the sound of an airplane nor of a gun could be heard. It was the largest gun used during the war, and is considered to be a supergun. Also called the "Kaiser Wilhelm Geschütz" (Kaiser Wilhelm Gun), it is often confused with Big Bertha, the howitzer used by the Germans against the Liège forts in 1914, and indeed the French called it by this name as well. It is also confused with the smaller "Langer Max" (Long Max) cannons from which it was derived. Although the famous Krupp-family artillery makers produced all these guns, the resemblance ended there.
 Gavrilo Princip (Serbian Cyrillic: Гаврило Принцип) (pronounced (gäv´ri:lo: pri:n´tsip) (July 25, 1894 – April 28, 1918) was a Serb member of the Young Bosnia secret society who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The event, known as the assassination in Sarajevo, prompted the Austrian action against Serbia that led to World War I. He is sometimes nicknamed "The Man That Started World War I". Having been too young at the time of the assassination (19) to face the death penalty, Princip received the maximum sentence of twenty years in prison, where he was held in harsh conditions worsened by the war. He died of tuberculosis on April 28, 1918 at Theresienstadt.
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