weekly history

This Week In History
One Madman's Legacy It was on June 28, 1914 that a single act of violence led to one of the greatest bloodbaths the world had ever seen. The perpetrator was someone you probably never heard of: Gavrilo Princip. He was a Serbian nationalist who, on that day, murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie. Within a month, World War I started in Europe. Before it was over, the Habsburg dynasty (the reigning power in Europe for six centuries) would be deposed, deficit spending to finance the war would destroy most countries' currencies and end the gold standard, the income tax was adopted in the United States to pay for the war and the seeds would be planted for the rise of communism in Russia, Nazism in Germany and fascism in Italy.  It's amazing what one madman's deed led to, isn't it?		It's amazing what one madman's deed led to, isn't it?