6. The Assassin Who Kicked Off WWI Lived Until 1918
Gavrilo Princep (1894 – 1918) was a Serb from Bosnia-Herzegovina, then a territory ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a teenager, he was radicalized by Serbian nationalists who called for a country unifying all southern Slavs (“Yugoslavia”), and joined an organization dedicated to freeing Slavs from Austria-Hungary’s control. Violent activism got him expelled from school in 1912, so he walked 170 miles to the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and joined guerrillas who raided across the border into Austro-Hungarian territory
He was soon recruited by the Serbian Black Hand, who equipped and trained Princep and other terrorists, then sent them to assassinate Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June of 1914. Princep fired the fatal shots, then swallowed a cyanide pill immediately after. However, it had expired, and he was captured. He was tried and convicted, but was only nineteen years old at the time – twenty seven days short of the twenty year old minimum age under Austro-Hungarian law for the death penalty. So he received the maximum sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment. He contracted tuberculosis in prison, and died on April 28th, 1918, three years and ten months after sparking the war.
