The World in 1914 the year a summer turned into a war

The Panama Canal, which opens in August, is only 48 miles long. It cuts about 8,000 miles off the voyage from New York to San Francisco, because ships no longer have to sail around the tip of South America.

Life back then

In August crowds filled the squares in Berlin, Paris, Vienna and London, and young men queued outside recruiting offices. Almost everyone expected a short war and said the soldiers would be home by Christmas. Instead both sides dug in, and by December a line of trenches ran from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. Families waited on postcards from the front and read the casualty lists in the paper. Cinemas kept filling up all the same, and the face people wanted to see was a new comic tramp played by Charlie Chaplin.

The year in 8 events

• 💵Jan 5 Ford says it will pay $5 for an eight hour day at its Detroit plants, about double the going rate. Thousands line up outside looking for work.
• 🕯️Jun 28 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife are shot in Sarajevo.
• ⚔️Jul 28 Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. Within a week most of Europe is at war.
• 🌍Aug 4 German troops march into Belgium, and Britain declares war on Germany.
• 🚢Aug 23 Japan declares war on Germany and moves against German bases in China and the Pacific islands.
• 🕊️Sep 1 Martha, the last passenger pigeon left alive, dies at the Cincinnati Zoo.
• ⚔️Sep 6 French and British troops halt the German advance at the Marne, a short drive from Paris.
• 🎄Dec 25 Soldiers along parts of the front in France and Belgium stop shooting, meet between the trenches and swap food and songs.

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