On the eve of the assassination’s centennial, find out how a teenage Serbian nationalist provided the spark for World War I The start of World War I, the so-called "Great War" of 1914 to 1918, was triggered when a teenage Serbian revolutionary shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie on their visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Deeply in love, Ferdinand chose to marry Sophie Chotek in 1900 despite the opposition of his uncle, the sitting Emperor Franz Josef, who refused to attend their wedding. Though not exactly a commoner, Sophie...