What Day Was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand?

About this date

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie were shot and killed in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb nationalist, during a state visit that had already survived one earlier bomb attempt the same morning.

The assassination triggered a rapid diplomatic crisis among Europe's interlocking alliance system, and within roughly five weeks had escalated into the start of World War I.

Princip was too young under Austro-Hungarian law to receive the death penalty and instead died in prison of tuberculosis before the war he helped trigger had ended.

The assassination succeeded partly by chance — after the initial bomb attempt failed, Franz Ferdinand's driver took a wrong turn, coincidentally stopping the car close to where Princip happened to be standing.