https://m.stacker.news/149937
Did you know that… on July 28, 1914, exactly one month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the Austro-Hungarian Empire officially declared war on Serbia, initiating World War I?
What began as a localized Balkan conflict quickly turned into a catastrophic global war due to a complex web of secret alliances. Believing the Serbian government was behind the assassination, Austria-Hungary launched an invasion, counting on Germany's total backing.
This move triggered an unstoppable domino effect: Russia immediately mobilized to defend Serbia; Germany then declared war on Russia and France; and the invasion of Belgium forced Great Britain into the conflict.
Known as "The Great War," this confrontation mobilized over 70 million military personnel, led to the collapse of four major empires (the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman), and completely reshaped the world's geopolitical map.
If you want to learn more about the Great War, I encourage you to see: They Shall Not Grow Old, 2018, this documentary film directed by Peter Jackson (director of The Lord of the Rings) is an absolute technical revolution. He restored, sped up and colorized videos from the Imperial War Museum archives, making soldiers look like they were filmed yesterday.
that's also the source of their epithet, "The Lost Generation"
something like 10% of the population got killed; regardless of whether the direct cause was biological plague, conventional munition, or chemical toxin, that's a significant culling, and had not been so widespread in centuries [if not even millenia] of recent history.