how the assassination of one person sparked the start of WW1
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Archduke Franz Ferdinand was next in line to the Habsburg throne of Austria-Hungary (AH) and other territories. Franz Joseph, the head of the House of Habsburg (who formed the dual monarchy of AH from the Austrian Empire, an interesting king in his own right), was aging and Archduke Ferdinand was expected to take the throne within a few years.
Serbia was a pricipality of AH which had a strong independence movement. They gained independence a couple decades before WW1. Russia was backing this independence movement, and signed a defense treaty with Serbia after they gained independence. There remained some strife between Serbia and AH regarding AH’s annexation of Bosnia (which some ethnic Serbs called home).
A Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, as part of a plot by a Serbian terrorist organization called the Black Hand which had some involvement with the Serbian crown. The Black Hand was a Serbian nationalist organization trying to form a greater Yugoslavia (South Slavia) in the Baltic states, including Bosnia, Serbia, and other parts of the (then) Ottoman Empire and AH.
So then AH declared war on Serbia because reasons. So Russia declared war on AH due to a defense agreement with Serbia. Germany declared war on Russia due to a defense agreement with AH. France, Egland, Italy, the Ottomans and others joined for similar reasons.
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