Important People

Woodrow Wilson

United States President Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856 in Staunton, Virginia. He entered politics in 1910 when he was persuaded to run for governor of New Jersey. After only two years as governor, he beat out Teddy Roosevelt and William H. Taft in the presidential election of 1912. Although he first championed isolationism, he became a strong advocate for U.S. involvement in World War I. He was one of the Big Four at the Congress of Versailles and wrote the Fourteen Points which were an outline of proposals for a post – World War I peace settlement. He pushed for the U.S. to join the League of Nations but was overridden by Congress. He died on February 3,1924.



Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was born in 1863. The nephew of the Hapsburg emperor Franz Josef, Ferdinand was first in line to the Austro-Hungarian throne when he visited Sarajevo in June of 1914. He and his wife Sophie were shot to death as they rode through the city in a motorcade on June 28; the assassin was Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Serbian nationalist group known as the Black Hand. His assassination ultimately led to the outbreak of World War I.

Arthur Zimmermann

Arthur Zimmermann was born on October 5, 1864. Zimmermann was a career diplomat who had been in service to his native Germany since 1896. By the beginning of World War I, Zimmermann was the undersecretary of state for foreign affairs, and in 1916 he was named foreign minister. On January 16, 1917 he sent a telegram to the German ambassador to Mexico, suggesting a Germany-Mexico alliance against the United States and promising German support for the Mexican recapture of territory in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. The British intercepted the coded message and deciphered it, finally revealing it to the United States. When the telegram was made public, President Woodrow Wilson had little choice but to declare war on Germany, and the U.S. entered the war. He died on June 6, 1940.