I have been learning about World War I, when (according to one historian) "global politics came unhinged."
Mine is not an historical interest, more to discover how we got in such difficulties as we are today...the economic-political governance I trusted to do this work as honorably as I did my own life's work, well, they let us down...so now all I can do is try to participate...
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But this was heart-rending; the last words of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, as he was bleeding out from a severed jugular, and his wife was collapsing, her head in his lap, mortally wounded also. Ironically, Sophie was usually not allowed to ride alongside her husband, as her blood was not quite as "royal" as his...but it was their anniversary, and she just told everybody that now she was riding with her husband.
Here is a photo of Gavrilo Princip; you can see how ill he is, in just a matter of weeks he himself was dead from tuberculosis. It is thought that several of the assassins held back that day, because they did not want to chance harming a woman. Princip himself never intended to harm her, but his arm was jostled. And, in the court when the Archduke's last words were read, Princip wept openly.