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The world’s loneliest house, stuck on the side of a remote mountain range, had lain empty for 100 years — but its mystery remains. Savvy Italian soldiers are said to have built the shelter as a place to rest while battling the Austro-Hungarians across the rugged terrain.

Many Americans have no idea why we celebrate Veterans Day on November 11. Those who know that the holiday began as Armistice Day typically think of it as a day of victory and peace. However, for those on the ground in Europe the last twenty-four hours before the cessation of hostilities on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, that day was nothing less than hell on earth.

It is not too far-fetched to say that Christian Europe officially died on June 28, 1914. On that day, the heir to the imperial throne of Austria-Hungary and his wife were gunned down on the streets of Sarajevo. In modern parlance, we would call the assassin, 19 year-old Serbian radical Gavrilo Princip, a terrorist. His act would lead directly to the outbreak of the Great War a little over a month later. Following is an article that appeared in The Outlook, an important New York-based political and social journal, from a week after the assassinations. It is notable that the...

Despite the U.S. declaring an “Open Door Policy” in support of China’s sovereignty, U.S. Marines on May 31, 1900 invaded China to help defeat the Boxer Rebellion. With imperial Great Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Japan, and Russia trying to carve China into colonies, Secretary of State John Hay in the fall of 1899 declared the United States would honor an “Open Door Policy” that respected Chinese territorial and administrative integrity and allowed equal trading privileges for all nations. Nineteenth-century imperialists had forced China’s ruling Qing Dynasty to accept foreign dominance over much of China’s economic affairs. Two Opium Wars with...

By Jasper Copping Last Updated: 1:29am BST 16/09/2007 He was a young man, like so many others, who fell on the battlefield at Passchendaele. Aged just 29, Private Jack Hunter died in the arms of his younger brother, Jim, who buried him there, on the front line, in a shallow grave. Jack Hunter, who died at Passchendaele, with his brother Jim Jack Hunter, who died in the first world war, with his brother Jim Once the guns had fallen silent, Jim returned to look for his brother's body, but the ground had been chewed up by artillery and he could...

Serbia on Sunday unveiled a monument to Gavrilo Princip, whose assassination of the Austro-Hungarian crown prince in Sarajevo helped ignite World War I and still provokes controversy in the ethnically-divided Balkans. Hundreds of citizens attended the ceremony in central Belgrade held on the anniversary of the 1914 assassination which is also the Serbian national holiday of St. Vitus Day. President Tomislav Nikolic described Princip—who is viewed as a terrorist by many outside Serbia—as a freedom fighter and hero. …

"The magnates of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff and Foreign Ministry now had their Pan-Slavic provocation. In one of the many pigionholes of the Ballplatz there lay a document three years old. This was the notorious ultimatum, drawn up to be used against Serbia when occasion should arise....So consistent had been Vienna's Great-Serbian grievance that a few minor changes in the phrasing of the ultimatum would bring it up to date.... The illustrious Count Leopold Berchtold ordered the ultimatum to be presented in Belgrade at six o'clock in the evening of Thursday, July 23. The ultimatum required Serbia's submission within forty-eight...

THE ULTIMATUM THAT MADE THE GREAT WAR A FOREGONE CONCLUSION / Austria-Hungary presents the Kingdom of Serbia with the "Impossible Ultimatum" 100 years ago July 23, 1914Aleksandra's Note: What follows is the impossible Austro-Hungarian ultimatum presented to the government of the Kingdom of Serbia on July 23, 1914, just over 3 weeks after the June 28th assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Fair historians have assessed this ultimatum as being both unreasonable and, more importantly, clearly intended to set Serbia up to fail to meet the demands, thus giving the green light for the war against the Serbs...

Aleksandra's Note: The following documentary evidence, the source of which is the Austrian Ministerial Council during the "JULY CRISIS" of 1914 confirms the "theory" that war with Serbia was a foregone conclusion regardless of the Austrian "Ultimatum" that would follow on July 23 and regardless of Serbia's response to that Ultimatum. War would be waged against Serbia, period. What these officials present at this council meeting did not foresee was that war against Serbia would be just the beginning... Sincerely, Aleksandra Rebic ***** Franz Ferdinand (in fur-lined coat) on a hunting weekend with Wilhelm II (left) in 1914. AKG Images...