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The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand sparked World War I. Researchers suggest that if he had worn a silk bulletproof vest, he may have survived. Other little-known facts include the creation of Doctor Dolittle and the introduction of tanks to the battlefield.
World War I was one of the most catastrophic events in human history. What’s also tragic is the notion that if a man wore an extra piece of clothing, millions of lives would have been saved.
The war began following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, on June 28, 1914. Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were riding in a motorcade in Sarajevo when Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb nationalist, shot dead the couple in their open car. The assassination set in motion a series of declarations of war, leading to the global conflict then known as the Great War.
Recently, however, it has been suggested that a silk bulletproof vest might have saved the Archduke’s life. According to researchers at the Royal Armories in the UK, Franz Ferdinand was among many high-ranking figures who owned one of the vests, the brainchild of Polish inventor Casimir Zeglen.
The researchers had replicas of the vests made and fired at them with weapons very similar to the gun used by Princip. According to researcher Lisa Traynor, the findings strongly suggest that the Archduke may have survived the shooting.
“I can report that silk has bullet-stopping abilities,” he said. We may never know why Franz Ferdinand was not wearing his jacket that day, especially considering that he had been warned that his visit could stir up riots.
Some little-known facts of the First World War:
Hugh Lofting created Doctor Dolittle so he could write to his children about something other than the horrors of war.
World War I introduced tanks to the battlefield; they were grouped by gender: “male” tanks carried cannons, while “female” tanks carried machine guns.
Although an armistice was reached on 11 November 1918, fighting continued in parts of Africa for another two weeks.
