Archduke Franz Ferdinand -IND- Jordan Cook

Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Ferdinand was born December 18^th, 1863 in the country of Austria. He was educated by private tutor and joined the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1883. His military career included service with an infantry regiment in Prague and with the hussars in Hungary. While in the army Ferdinand received several promotions: captain, major, colonel, and general.

           Ferdinand was popular with the armed forces and in the summer of 1914. General Oskar Potiorek, governor of the Austrian provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina, invited the Inspector of the Armed Forces to watch his troops on maneuvers. The assassination of this man was one of the many reasons that The Great War or WWI started. 

The Zimmermann Telegram -ME- Jordan Cook

The Zimmermann Telegram

The Zimmermann Telegram was a coded message sent from German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to Germany's ambassador in Mexico. The message was said to include the instructions to have Mexico enter the war. In exchange, the Mexicans will gain back all the land they had lost to the Americans. The British Intelligence somehow found a way to intercept this coded message and were able to decipher it.

 Within this secret message, the British let the United States know about it, and made plans for war.  The WWI coded message that helped change the tide of public opinion in the U.S. The American press made newspapers stating that were are going to war with Germany on April 6^th 1917. The validity of the message is still unknown as the British Intelligence keeps the case classified to this day. 

Eugene Debs -IND- Selena Yoder

Eugene Debs 

                 Eugene Debs, founder of the Industrial Workers of the World, was a socialist and a commonly nominated candidate for the presidential election. He was a highly charismatic leader and speaker. He often called on the vocabulary of Christianity, even though he disliked religion. President Wilson referred to Debs as ‘a traitor to his country’ due to his ties with the Union. After he was imprisoned on April 13, 1919 he ran for president in 1920.  He was released in 1921, and nominated for a peace prize in 1924.

Gentlemen's Agreement -ME- Selena Yoder

The Gentlemen's Agreement 

              After the huge influx of immigrants, many Americans began to discriminate against the newest immigrants. These feelings announced themselves in the Workingman’s Party of California, led by Denis Kearney, who was an Irish immigrant. They fought to cut off the Asian immigrants and ended up landing seats in California’s legislature. From there, they pressured Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law that disallowed immigration from Chinese for ten years and blocked the Chinese already in the country from becoming citizens.

              The discrimination did not just stop at the Chinese, in 1906 the board of Education in San Francisco ordered that all Chinese, Korean, and Japanese children to go to a racially segregated school in Chinatown. Japan took offense to the horrid treatment their people were being given. As a response President Roosevelt invited the school board leaders to the White House. He proposed an idea where the Asian children could go back to their regular school, and he would stop immigration from Japan. He then proceeded to discuss a deal with Japan, who agreed to limit emigration to the US. This became known as the Gentleman’s Agreement because no papers were filed and it depended on both sides to carry out their end of the bargain.

Treaty of Versailles -ME- Selena Yoder

Treaty of Versailles

             

                 The Treaty of Versailles states peace between Germany and the Allied Powers at the end of World War I. It was signed exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Even though the treaty ended the war it didn't apply to the Central Powers (the ones allied with Germany) and there were later treaties created for them. Because of this there was six months of war after the war ended.

               One of the terms of the treaty was that Germany and the other Central Powers had to accept responsibility for causing the war.  It was a leading cause of World War II. Under the treaty, Germany was forced to allow the Allied Forces to occupy Rhineland for fifteen years. Germany wasn’t allowed to have more than 100,000 soldiers, it’s navy was limited to 15,000 men. There was no exporting or importing of weapons. 

Sussex Pledge -ME- Taylor Raatz

Sussex Pledge

            The Americans did not want to join World War I; however a series of events triggered America to join the war.  Shortly after the war began, Britain declared a blockade on German ports forcing them not to ship items sailing to Europe. They forced the ships to land at British ports for inspections. Britain and France depended on oversea shipping from America for food and supplies. To stop this, Germans deployed submarines to stop the ships from shipping their items. The Germans then announced that they would sink any ship they saw around British waters, America was furious.

            On May 7, 1915, The British passenger ship, Lusitania, entered the war zone. A German submarine then sunk the ship killing 1,200 people including 128 Americans. Wilson tried to defuse the crisis, by sending several protests to Germany saying that they need to stop endangering their men. Then a German submarine torpedoed a boat called the Sussex, injuring several Americans. Wilson then made one last offer and the Germans accepted it, it was called the Sussex Pledge, saying that Germany would no longer sink merchant ships.

Jose Marti -IND- Jordan Cook

Jose Marti

José Julián Martí Pérez was born January 28, 1853 in Havana, Cuba. He was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. He did so much in his short life.

He extensively traveled to Spain, Latin America, and the United States, raising awareness and support for the cause of Cuban independence. Jose Marti is considered one of the great turn of the century Latin American intellectuals. Marti believed that freedom and justice should be the cornerstones of any government; one has only to read his work and learn of the struggle that he took up freely. Marti died in military action on May 19, 1895 at the age of 42.