the assassination of franz ferdinand was actually the most hilariously botched assassination attempt of all time though like i can’t even explain to you how badly it went i mean there were six guys and the first one chickened out and the second one forgot to factor in the delay on a hand grenade so it exploded like three cars past the archduke’s so the guy took a cyanide pill and threw himself into a river, but the cyanide was expired and the river was six inches deep so the police just pulled him out and took him off to jail and then everyone else basically gave up and headed home, and then the driver of the archduke took a wrong turn and the car stalled next to the last of the six guys, and he was just like “what a crazy random happenstance” and started world war one
You forgot to mention that the last guy only happened to kill Franz because he had just come out of the sandwich shop where the car stopped
It is obvious to even the most casual observer that this particular event has been meddled with by at least two groups of time travelers trying to change history. Please, if you invent a time machine, leave the assassination of Ferdinand alone; the space-time continuum there is already showing obvious cracks from the strain.
the story of how ww1 was started by a bunch of incompetent children is my fave historical fact of all time – (and I do mean children, since all 5 of the initially arrested assassination conspirators were minors under austrian law at the time)
and the fact that some of them initially banded together to commit, like, just any unspecified act of terrorism,not necessarily assassinate the archduke,
as a sort of early 20th century assassination fandom, because they idolized a guy from their town who had previously tried to kill a high ranking bosnian official, meaning terrorism was just the major teen fad of their time
but my absolute fave little factoid that really shows these were just completely regular 19 year old boys in every way is that all of them took a virginity pledge so nothing would distract them in their revolutionary mission
except gavrilo princip had a gf called jelena, and on the night before the assassination he decided he really didn’t want to die a virgin, so he arranged a rendez-vous with jelena in a park and tried to explain that it’s vitally important that they have sex right then, but he couldn’t tell her why because he didn’t want to implicate her in the assassination
so obviously with it being 1914 she says no, he goes home, then goes on to start ww1 in the morning, but what makes the story for me is that when they later interviewed jelena about gavrilo and the assassination, after telling the story about them meeting in the park she said the following (i’m paraphrasing slightly)
‘i’m not surprised. gavrilo was so pissed that night (about them not having sex) he was ready to shoot god, let alone an emperor ’
tfw WWI was partially caused by tfw no gf/sex
Tag: world history
Haiti and the United States
Hello, while we have kept you updated with posts about the U.S. Occupation of Haiti, I simply wanted to take a small break from that to share a few titles with you on another topic of great interest, that is, the ‘diplomatic’ relations between Haiti and United States during and after the Haitian Revolution. I put diplomatic in quotation marks since, from the time of Jefferson to the Civil War, Haiti and the United States did not enjoy formal diplomatic relations (given that Haiti’s independence as a state was not recognised).
Although there seems to be this view that Haiti automatically existed in antagonism with the United States (which is not so completely false), if we accept this too wholesomely, I think we risk missing out on the complexity posed by Saint-Domingue/Haiti to a country like the United States. Literature on American-Haitian relations suggests that different American administrations dealt with Saint-Domingue/Haiti well, differently. Indeed, it is very interesting to see how the U.S. had to reconcile the principles of its own revolution with the advent of a free black state like Haiti.
At any rate, I hope these will be useful and feel free to add any suggestions. Happy reading!
B O O K S
A Proslavery Foreign Policy: Haitian-American Relations during the Early Republic by Tim Matthewson
African Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents edited by Maurice Jackson and Jacqueline Bacon
Caribbean Crossing: African Americans and the Haitian Emigration Movement by Sara Fanning
Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance by Ronald Angelo Johnson
Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic by Ashli White
Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean by Alfred N. Hunt
From Saint-Domingue to New Orleans: Migration and Influences by Nathalie Dessens
The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World by David P. Geggus
The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 1776-1891 by Rayford W. Logan
The Road to Louisiana: The Saint-domingue Refugees, 1792-1809 edited by Carl A. Brasseaux and Glenn R. Conrad
The World of the Haitian Revolution ed. by David Patrick Geggus and Norman Fiering
Toussaint’s Clause: The Founding Fathers and the Haitian Revolution by Gordon S. Brown
A R T I C L E S
‘America’s Response to the Slave Revolt in Haiti, 1791-1806′ by Donald R. Hickey
‘Black Talleyrand: Toussaint Louverture’s Diplomacy, 1798-1802′ by Philippe R. Girard
‘Class Conflict and Diplomacy: Haitian Isolation in the 19th-Century World System’ by Arthur L. Stinchcombe
’Jefferson and Haiti’ by Tim Matthewson
‘Jefferson and the Nonrecognition of Haiti’ by Tim Matthewson
‘Revolutionary Saint Domingue and the Emerging Atlantic: Paradigms of Sovereignty’ by Carolyn Fick
‘The Haitian Revolution, Black Petitioners and Refugee Widows in Maryland, 1796-1820′ by Patricia A. Reid
‘The Haitian Revolution and the Forging of America’ by Jim Thomson
To this excellent list I’d also add the articles:
“Hamilton and Haiti” by Daniel Lang, located in The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton
“The Power of Blackness: Thomas Jefferson and the Revolution in St. Domingue” by Michael Zuckerman in Almost Chosen People: Oblique Biographies in the American Grain
Waiting for Winter 