Gavrilo Princip in his Cell - Unknown

Gavrilo Princip photo, retrieved from newstrick.com

The degree which one individual can change history is often quite relative.  As human beings we have some power to change many things in our own little corner of the world. Still fewer of us have the ability to significantly impact the world on a larger scale. We can even change our own future is we believe we can. All that being said, there are only a few who can claim to have changed the history of the world in a very significant and profoundly impactful way.

No one person’s actions, has had more of a profound impact on the history of world in the 20^th century than one Gavrilo Princip, and most people don’t even know his name or who he is.

On April 28, 1914 Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, on the northern end of the Latin Bridge in Sarajevo. This act set in motion events that not only ignited the First World War, but it still has a profound effect on the world today.

Princip was a disgruntled and disenchanted young Bosnian. He like many other young Bosnians, was angered by the annexation and occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so he decided to take radical actions.

Later when he was arrested, this expressionless photo was taken of Princip by one of his Jailers.  The vacant look seems to be in direct contrast to the world wide misery his actions caused.

His actions helped light the fuse to an already volatile situation between the major powers in Europe at the time.  

Four years later when the war was over the world was a profoundly different place.

Besides the tens of millions of casualties, the devastation, suffering and misery the so called Great War brought about, this is a short list of the more lasting legacies of the war:

The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19

The Treaty of Versailles, World War II and the rise of Nazism

The inception of global communism and the fall of the Russian empire

The fall of the Ottoman Empire

The fall of the Hapsburg Empire

The rise of the United Sates as a global power

The decline of the British Empire

The redrawing of the maps of Europe, Russia and the Middle East
And Universal suffrage - Just to name a few 

For those who still doubt that we are still living with the legacy of that war, consider that there are still parts of France were people cannot live because of the enormous amount of un-exploded ordnance that is still present there prevents it.

In 2010 Germany finally made the last of its war reparations payments to France.

One angry young man with a gun and a bomb singlehandedly re-wrote the history of the world, and assured those who came after would live in a drastically different one. He no doubt never fully realized the consequences of his actions.