July 11, 1995: The Srebrenica Massacre

July 11, 1995: The Srebrenica Massacre takes place during the Bosnian Civil War, with Eastern Orthodox Catholic Serbs killing over 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks. It is the single biggest war crime in Europe since V-E Day.

It was mainly perpetrated by units of the Bosnian Serb Army of Replublika Srpska under Ratko Mladić, Chief of that Army's General Staff. He becomes known as "The Butcher of Bosnia." Also participating was a Serbian paramilitary unit called "Scorpions."

Before the massacre, the United Nations had declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica a "safe area" A UN Protection Force contingent of 370 lightly armed soldiers from the Netherlands failed to deter the town's capture and subsequent massacre.

It was this act that finally moved President Bill Clinton to rally NATO to take action against Serbia. Air strikes began on September 14. On September 26, the Serbs surrendered.

Mladić remained at large until 2011, when he was arrested by Serbian special police officers. He was extradited to The Hague, the Netherlands, home of the International Court of Justice. It took until 2017 to try him and convict him. As of July 11, 2022, he remains in prison in The Hague. (UPDATE: He died in 2026.)

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July 11, 1995 was a Tuesday. Football player Joey Bosa was born.

There was only 1 score on this historic day. Major League Baseball held its All-Star Game at what was then known as The Ballpark in Arlington (now Choctaw Stadium), the home of the Texas Rangers, between Dallas and Fort Worth. Frank Thomas of the Chicago White Sox hit a home run for the American League. The National League got only 3 hits, but they were all solo home runs, giving them a 3-2 win, by Mike Piazza of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Craig Biggio of the Houston Astros, and Jeff Conine of the Florida Marlins.

June 28, 1914: The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

June 28, 1914: Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, are assassinated in Sarajevo, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to whose throne the Archduke was the immediate heir.

The Empire then stretched from the Alps to the Black Sea, but had so many different ethnicities under its domain that it was hard to keep it together. Franz Ferdinand, 50, was the heir presumptive to the throne, the nephew of the Emperor, Franz Josef, 83. Franz Ferdinand was no friend to the Serbs: At various times, he called them "pigs," "thieves," "murderers" and "scoundrels." (Imagine if he had seen what the Serbs did to the Bosnians in the 1990s.)

Sophie, 46, was a German princess, but not of dynastic rank, and so the Emperor refused to permit the marriage. A compromise was worked out: Franz Ferdinand could marry Sophie only if he renounced the right of succession to any of their descendants.

In 1913, Franz Ferdinand had been named inspector-general of the imperial military. He was visiting Sarajevo, with Sophie, to inspect Austrian troops there. Six members of the Black Hand, terrorists trying to establish an independent "Greater Serbia," prepared to assassinate him to make their point.

At 10:15 AM local time, Nedeljko Čabrinović threw a bomb that bounced off the Archduke's car, a 1911 Gräf & Stift 28/32 PS Double Phaeton. The car behind it ran over it as it exploded, wounding 20 people, but killing none.

(A similar thing happened with the assassination of Czar Alexander II of Russia in 1881. That also required a 2nd attempt by the conspirators, which, in that case, came immediately after.)

The Archduke and Archduchess arrived at the Town Hall for a reception with the Mayor, Fehim Čurčić. In his speech at the reception, the Archduke thanked the people of Sarajevo "as I see in them an expression of their joy at the failure of the attempt at assassination."

Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb a few weeks short of his 20th birthday, learned that the 1st attempt had failed. He was determined to make a 2nd attempt. Knowing the route of the motorcade would be on the Appel Quay, along the Miljacka River, he stood in front of Moritz Schiller's delicatessen, adjacent to the Latin Bridge.

The site of the assassination in 2007. Schiller's Delicatessen

is now the Museum of Sarajevo 1878-1918.

The Archduke's driver, Leopold Lojka, made a right turn, and was told that he should have turned left. He stopped, and began to turn the car around -- right in front of Princip. At 11:00 AM -- the time throughout most of Europe, 10 AM in London, 5 AM on the U.S. East Coast -- the would-be assassin had his chance, lunged forward, and fired 2 shots. Franz Ferdinand was hit in the neck, Sophie in the abdomen.

Franz Ferdinand knew he was doomed, and called out to his wife, "Sophie, Sophie! Don't die! Live for our children!" But she was already dead. Asked about his own condition, he said, "It is nothing." It wasn't: He was pronounced dead at 11:30.

Princip was unrepentant. At his trial, he said, "I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of state, but it must be freed from Austria."

Princip's mug shot

On July 23, the imperial government issued the "July Ultimatum": If, within 48 hours, the semi-autonomous Serbian government did not crack down on the Black Hand, Austrian troops would come in and do so. The Serbian government did not crack down on the Black Hand, and on July 28, Austria declared war on Serbia. If that had been the end of it, Austria would have won what would have remained an internal uprising.

That was not the end of it. The Serbs appealed to their allies, the Russian Empire. On July 31, Czar Nicholas II ordered mobilization. Had that been the end of it, Russia likely would have won the war, the Austro-Hungarian Empire would have been broken up, a united Slavic nation would have been formed in the Balkans, and Russia would have emerged as perhaps the strongest nation on the European continent, on a level with France and Germany.

That was not the end of it. The German Empire came to the aid of their neighbor and linguistic brother Austria. On August 1, Kaiser Wilhelm II -- a cousin of Czar Nicholas -- declared war on Russia. If that had been the end of it, Germany vs. Russia would have been a brutal war, but Russia's superior numbers would not have saved them against Germany's more advanced military, and the German Empire would have taken big parts of the Russian one, including Poland, and emerged as perhaps the strongest nation in the world, at the very least on the same level as the British Empire and the United States of America.

That was not the end of it. Also on August 1, France mobilized in support of its ally, Russia. On August 3, Germany declared war on France. If that had been the end of it, it would have been a two-front war, but Germany would probably have beaten France, as it had in 1870, and as its predecessor nation, the Holy Roman Empire, had in 1815.

That was not the end of it. On August 4, in support of allies France and Russia, the British Empire declared war on Germany. Britain's King George V was a cousin of both the Kaiser and the Czar: All 3 were grandsons of Queen Victoria, whose 9 children had married into several royal families, to the point where her son, George's father, King Edward VII, was known as "The Uncle of Europe." (He was married to Princess Alexandra of Denmark, and her father, King Christian IX, was called "The Father-in-Law of Europe.")

Everyone thought "The Great War" would be over by Christmas. Instead, in September, because the British were there to support the French, a stalemate developed on the Western Front, and Germany couldn't redirect troops to assist those on the Eastern Front.

Emperor Franz Joseph died on November 21, 1916. He was succeeded by a grandnephew, who took the throne as Charles I, Emperor of Austria, and Karl IV, King of Hungary, in the "Dual Monarchy."

America entered the war on April 6, 1917, after Germany began attacking American ships aiding the Allies, and after it attempted to get Mexico into the war on its side. (This failed.) Russia collapsed, and there were 2 revolutions in 1917. The 1st, in March, overthrew the Czar, and attempted to establish a republic. The 2nd, in November, overthrew that, and the new government of Vladimir Lenin was Communist. It took the Czar and his family prisoner, and executed them all on July 17, 1918.

Lenin took Russia out of the war on March 3, 1918. With the Eastern Front rendered unnecessary, the Germans, themselves on the verge of collapse, could throw everything onto the Western Front, and were about to win, a great come-from-behind victory, when American troops were finally able to enter combat on June 1.

On November 11, 1918, 2 days after the Kaiser admitted the inevitable, and abdicated, fleeing to the Netherlands, the Germans surrendered. The Great War, the World War, "The War to End All Wars," was over. There were over 10 million military personnel killed, and at least that many civilians. New nations were created, including an independent Poland, and the combined Slavic nation the conspirators of June 1914 wanted, named Yugoslavia.

Most of them were not around to appreciate this. Most of the conspirators were under age 20, and considered minors, and not executed, but that didn't necessarily keep them alive long enough to see the war's end. Veljko Čubrilović, Danilo Ilić and Mihajlo "Miško" Jovanović were executed by hanging on February 3, 1915. Čabrinović died in prison of tuberculosis on January 20, 1916, age 20. Just 23 days later, Mayor Čurčić also died of tuberculosis, at 50. 

Trifun Grabež also died in prison of tuberculosis, on October 21, 1916. Princip would also die in prison of tuberculosis, on April 28, 1918. A prison psychiatrist who examined Princip wrote he believed the World War was bound to happen, independent of his actions, and that he "cannot feel himself responsible for the catastrophe."

Lojka died in 1926, at 39, but I can't find a cause of death. To the end of his life, he claimed to still hear the voices telling him he had made a wrong turn.

Vaso Čubrilović, Veljko's brother, at 17 the youngest of the conspirators, lived to see the end of World War I. and was then released. So was Cvjetko Popović. When Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, Vaso was arrested, and sent to a concentration camp. He survived that, too. Popović lived until 1980. Vaso was the last survivor of the events, dying on June 11, 1990 -- not quite living to see the breakup of Yugoslavia and the awful multi-front civil war that followed.

Both the death car and Princip's pistol are now in the Museum of Military History in Vienna, the capital of the Republic of Austria. The museum on the site of Schiller's Delicatessen includes a replica of that pistol, and has placed brass footprints where Princip stood as he fired. They had to be replaced in 1945 after the Nazis broke them up, and again in 1995 after the Serbs bombed it.

The day after the Armistice, November 12, 1918, the Republic of Austria was proclaimed, abolishing the monarchy. Emperor Charles I, a.k.a. King Karl IV, died in exile in Portugal in 1922. His son, Crown Prince Otto, only 9 years old, became the head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, and held that title until his death in 2011, at 98. He never attempted to re-establish the monarchy of either Austria or Hungary, or to claim a reign over any other country that once had land occupied by the Empire. He did, however, lead the Austrian Resistance to the Nazis in World War II. And he won a seat in the European Parliament in 1979, holding it for 20 years.

As of June 28, 2022, his son, Karl von Habsburg, a.k.a. Karl Habsburg-Lothringen, 61, is the head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. He is a broadcast executive, and has even hosted a game show on Austrian TV.  

And now, ladies and gentlemen:

Heeeeeeeere's Charlie! I mean, His Majesty, the Emperor!

In 2014, the BBC began its commemorations of the Centennial of World War I. Among its productions was something unimaginable in 1914: Actors playing the leading figures in the buildup to the war, engaging in a rap battle: Princip, Franz Joseph, Nicholas II, Wilhelm II and George V. A figure playing Field Marshal Joseph Joffre represented France, but, oddly, had no lines in the battle.

Except for the Czar, played by a much larger, scarier-looking man -- one commenter said he looked more like Nicholas' father, Czar Alexander III -- the actors looked the part and had the right accents. But I'm still not sure if the actor playing Franz Joseph was an actual old man, or a younger guy in makeup. There was also nobody representing the other countries that got in: No Wilson for America, no Robert Borden for Canada, no Andrew Fisher for Australia, no King Victor Emmanuel III for Italy, and no Sultan Mehmed V or General Mustafa Kemal Atatürk for the Ottoman Empire.

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June 28, 1914 was a Sunday. This was before the founding of the NFL, the NBA or the NHL. There was a National Hockey Association and a Pacific Coast Hockey Association, the former with a roster of teams entirely in Canada, the latter with teams in Seattle and Portland, but this was the off-season for both leagues. There were Major League Baseball games played that day, including in the upstart Federal League:

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Naps, 6-4 at Navin Field in Detroit. When Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie, the Cleveland manager and 2nd baseman, requested a trade after the season, the Naps changed their name to the Cleveland Indians. Navin Field would be renamed Briggs Stadium in 1938 and Tiger Stadium in 1961.

* The Chicago White Sox swept a doubleheader from the St. Louis Browns at Comiskey Park in Chicago, winning both games in 10 innings. The Pale Hose won the opener 2-1, and the nightcap 3-2.

* The following American League teams did not play on the day: The New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox, the Philadelphia Athletics and the Washington Senators.

* The Cincinnati Reds swept a doubleheader from the Pittsburgh Pirates at Redland Field in Cincinnati, which was renamed Crosley Field in 1934. The Reds won the 1st game 7-6, and the 2nd game 1-0.

* A doubleheader was split at Robison Field in St. Louis. The St. Louis Cardinals won the 1st game 6-0. The Chicago Cubs won the 2nd game, 8-5.

* The following National League teams did not play on the day: The New York Giants, the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Boston Braves and the Philadelphia Phillies.

* In the Federal League, a doubleheader was split at Federal Park in Indianapolis. The Kansas City Packers won the 1st game 2-0. The Indianapolis Hoosiers won the 2nd game 8-7.

* The Chicago Whales beat the St. Louis Terriers, 7-3 at Handlan's Park in St. Louis.

* The following Federal League teams did not play on the day: The Brooklyn Tip-Tops, the Baltimore Terrapins, the Buffalo Blues and the Pittsburgh Rebels.

June 20, 1976: The Panenka Penalty

June 20, 1976: The Final of the 1976 UEFA European Football Championship is held at Red Star Stadium in Belgrade, Yugoslavia -- now the Rajko Mitić Stadium in Belgrade, Serbia. This was the only time UEFA the Union of European Football Associations, ever held a tournament, or the Final of a club tournament, in a Communist country. (It has since held them in former Communist countries.)

England did not qualify. Nor did France, nor Italy. Under the format then in place, only 4 teams did, including Yugoslavia, who did so only because they were the hosts, although they usually had a good team. In one Semifinal, Czechoslovakia beat the Netherlands, 3-1. In the other, West Germany, who had won the last 2 major tournaments, the 1974 World Cup and Euro 72, beat Yugoslavia, 4-2. Both games went to extra time.

The Final also went to extra time. Czechoslovakia led, 2-0 after just 25 minutes, but West Germany came back, and the game ended, 2-2. So it went to penalty kicks. Stereotypically, Germany usually win those. With the Czechs up, 4-3, Ivo Viktor, goalkeeper for Dukla Prague was ready to try to stop Bayern Munich star Uli Hoeneß, but he missed his shot completely, sending it over the crossbar.

It was now up to Antonín Panenka to face the best goalie in the world at the time, Bayern's Josef "Sepp" Maier. Taking a short and stuttering run-up, he gently struck the ball in an arcing parabola up the middle, while Maier had already dived and was resting on his knees. The Czechs had won, 5-3.

It remains the only major tournament ever won by either a united Czechoslovakia, or by the Czech Republic (a.k.a. Czechia) or Slovakia separately, although they reached the Final of the 1962 World Cup, and finished 3rd at Euro 1980.

Such a penalty attempt has been known as a "Panenka" ever since, but a stuttering run-up is almost a giveaway that this is what the player is going to do, and it gets stopped more than most shots.

A midfielder, Antonín Panenka played for Bohemians Prague from 1967 to 1981, never winning a major trophy -- except Euro 76 for his country. He then went to Rapid Wien, and helped the Vienna club win the Austrian Bundesliga in 1982 and '83; and the Austrian Cup in 1983, '84 and '85. He continued to play professionally until 1993, at age 44. He later served as team president for Bohemians. As of June 20, 2022, he is still alive.

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June 20, 1976 was a Sunday. Juliano Belletti, of Brazil's 2002 World Cup winners, was born that day. So was Carlos Lee, the Panamanian-born All-Star left fielder for the Houston Astros.

And these Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-3 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Dock Ellis outpitched Ken Brett. The Yankees scored 5 runs in the 3rd inning, including 2 on a bases-loaded single by Thurman Munson.

* The New York Mets lost to the San Francisco Giants, 9-2 at Shea Stadium. Ed Halicki was the winning pitcher, as the Giants tagged Jon Matlack for 5 runs before the Mets even came to bat, and never looked back. Halicki even went 2-for-3 with 3 RBIs in his own cause.

* The Montreal Expos beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 5-4 at Jarry Park in Montreal.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Cincinnati Reds, 6-1 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Jim Kaat outpitched Don Gullett. Mike Schmidt went 3-for-5. Pete Rose went 2-for-5 with an RBI. Johnny Bench went 0-for-4.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-0at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Dick Ruthven pitched a 4-hit shutout. Darrel Chaney went 2-for-4 with 3 RBIs.

* The Houston Astros beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-4 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. The Astros scored 5 runs in the top of the 8th. Willie Stargell went 0-for-2 with 2 walks.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Kansas City Royals, 11-8 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The Royals scored 6 runs in the bottom of the 3rd inning, but the Tribe came right back with 8 runs in the top of the 4th. Rico Carty went 3-for-5 with a solo home run. George Brett went 2-for-5.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Minnesota Twins, 7-3 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Mark Fidrych outpitched Bill Singer. Rod Carew went 1-for-5.

* The San Diego Padres beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 5-4 at Busch Memorial Stadium. Willie McCovey hit his 461st career home run for the Padres. Dave Winfield went 1-fo-r3 with a walk. Lou Brock went 1-for-3 with a walk, a stolen base, and 2 RBIs.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Texas Rangers, 2-0 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. Mike Cuellar pitched a 3-hit shutout, outpitching Gaylord Perry -- screwball over spitball. Brooks Robinson, in his last full season, went 2-for-4. Reggie Jackson, in his only season with the O's, went 0-for-3.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the California Angels, 4-3 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). Rick Burleson singled Bobby Darwin home with the winning run in the top of the 11th inning. Carl Yastrzemski entered the game late, and went 0-for-1 with a walk.

* And the Oakland Athletics beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 7-5 at the Oakland Coliseum. Don Baylor hit a home run for the A's. Robin Yount went 4-for-4 with a home run and 3 RBIs for the Brewers.

February 5, 1994: The Markale Massacre

An anniversary memorial

February 5, 1994: The Markale Massacre, the "Kristallnacht" of the Bosnian Civil War, occurs. The world learned about it the next day, and realized that something had to be done. But it would still be a while before anything was.

The attack was carried out by the Army of Republika Srpska (the Bosnian Serb Army), the self-proclaimed Serb secessionist republic, a territory within the newly independent Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had broken away from Yugoslavia on March 3, 1992. The war began a month later, on April 6.

A 4.7-inch mortar was launched into the Markale (marketplace) located in the historic core of Sarajevo, the new nation's capital. A total of 68 people were killed, and 144 more were wounded.

Serb forces, which had already detained Bosnians, due to their Muslim faith, in concentration camps in an "ethnic cleansing" measure, lied, claiming that the Bosnian army had shelled its people to provoke intervention from Western countries on their side.

In his last book, Beyond Peace, former President Richard Nixon cited this attack as a reminder that America still had to stand up to tyranny. He died 11 weeks later, before the book could be published.

The world seemed to agree that something needed to be done, to stop the worst ethnic violence in Europe since World War II, 49 years earlier. It would take another year and a half before something was. "Never again"? It was happening again. There would be a 2nd Markale Massacre on August 28, 1995, killing 43 people. That finally got NATO to act. Three months later, the Serbs were scared into making peace.

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February 5, 1994 was a Saturday. Baseball and football were out of season. There were 7 games played in the NBA:

* The New Jersey Nets beat the Detroit Pistons, 107-100 at The Palace in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills, Michigan. The Nets got 31 points from Derrick Coleman, and 29 from Kenny Anderson. Joe Dumars scored 42 in defeat, to lead all scorers on the day.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Miami Heat, 96-94 at the Miami Arena.

* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Atlanta Hawks, 109-93 at The Coliseum in the Cleveland suburb of Richfield, Ohio.

* The Indiana Pacers beat the Charlotte Hornets, 111-102 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

* The Seattle SuperSonics beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 115-94 at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee.

* The Utah Jazz beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 128-114 at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.

* And the Los Angeles Clippers beat the Sacramento Kings, 122-110 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.

There were 8 games in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders beat the Quebec Nordiques, 3-2 at the Colisée de Québec.

* The New Jersey Devils beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 7-3 at the Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 4-0 at the Boston Garden.

* The Washington Capitals beat the Tampa Bay Lightning, 6-3 at the USAir Arena (formerly the Capital Centre) in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Ottawa Senators, 4-3 at the Ottawa Civic Centre (now the TD Place Arena).

* In an "Original Six" matchup, the Detroit Red Wings beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-3 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* The St. Louis Blues beat the San Jose Sharks, 4-3 at the St. Louis Arena.

* And the Calgary Flames beat the Los Angeles Kings, 5-4 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California. Al MacInnis scored the winning goal, with 38 seconds left in overtime.

And in English soccer, North London team Arsenal went to Suffolk, and beat Ipswich Town, 5-1 at Portman Road. Ian Wright scored a hat trick.

January 8, 1918: Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points

January 8, 1918: President Woodrow Wilson delivers his State of the Union Address. Nine months earlier, he had asked Congress for a Declaration of War on Imperial Germany. Now, in another Joint Session of Congress, he offers a plan for peace after the war.

He declared fourteen points, which he regarded as the only possible basis of an enduring peace:

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. In other words, the nations of the world should not negotiate treaties in secret.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants. This one was done in reaction to German attacks on Allied ships, including the 1915 sinking of the RMS Lusitania.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. This, sort-of, predicted the European Common Market, which led to the European Union.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

X. The people of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.

XI. Romania, Serbia and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Ottoman rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant. This "access to the sea" became "The Polish Corridor," with the former German port city of Danzig, which became the Polish port city of Gdańsk, which eventually became the flashpoint of Poland's struggle to free itself from Soviet control.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike. This became the League of Nations.

As a major public statement of war aims, it became the basis for the terms of the German surrender at the end of the war. After the speech, House worked to secure the acceptance of the Fourteen Points by Allied leaders. The report was made as negotiation points, and the Fourteen Points were later accepted by France and Italy on November 1, 1918.

But there were doubts about the Fourteen Points. Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau of France, who would lead France's part in the peace negotiations, said, "The good Lord had only ten!" meaning the Ten Commandments, and humanity had managed to make a mess of those.

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January 8, 1918 was a Tuesday. Baseball and football were out of season. Professional basketball barely existed. This was the 1st season of the NHL, but no games were scheduled. So there were no scores on this historic day.