New Delhi, July 28: In late June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
An escalation of threats and mobilization orders followed the incident, leading to the outbreak of World War I on July 28, which pitted Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Japan.
The four years of the Great War--as it was then known--saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction, thanks to grueling trench warfare and the introduction of modern weaponry such as machine guns, tanks and chemical weapons.
By the time World War I ended in the defeat of the Central Powers in November 1918, more than 9 million soldiers had been killed and 21 million more wounded.
Let's go back in history and see in pics the destruction caused by the Great War:
