Franz Ferdinand Archduke's Assassination

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On Sunday, June 28th, 1914, Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungary, Prince of Hungary and Bohemia, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, Countess Chotek of Chortkov and Wognin were touring Sarajevo on behalf of his uncle Franz Joseph, 1st Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary in an attempt to win the affections of the Bosnian people. The couple was travelling by motorcade from the Sarajevo train station to the town hall when attempted assassin Nedeljko Cabrinovic threw a bomb at their car. The bomb missed, bouncing off of their car, landing and exploding under the car behind them, injuring as many as 20 people. The assassin was arrested after swallowing a cyanide pill and throwing himself into the Miljacka River, which was too low to drown in on account of the hot dry summer. …show more content…
The Archduke then read his own speech, its pages still wet with blood having been in the bombed car. He added a few lines of his own about the bombing incident, and thanked the good people of Sarajevo for their ovations as a sign of joy over the failure of the assassination attempt. After his speech the Archduke’s party discussed what steps to take next. After a plan to wait at the town hall for a troop escort was waived off as the troops would not be properly dressed for such an escort, the Archduke and his wife decided to skip the next stop on their tour. Instead of continuing on to the museum, they instead decided to see those earlier wounded at the hospital. In the confusion the instructions for the new route were not passed on to the drivers of the motorcade to tragic