The Goddess of Fortune

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ON A VERY HOT Sunday morning in June 1914, Gavrilo Princip ducked into a sandwich shop in Sarajevo for an early lunch a little before noon. Earlier that day he had failed to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Outside the sandwich shop quietly eating his cheese sandwich, Gavrilo could not believe his luck: the large limousine carrying the royal couple stopped directly in front of him. Princip dropped his sandwich, took three steps forward, and fired just two shots, killing both Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. Had the sandwich shop been located two doors further down the street, Princip would have been too far from the car.

This is not to say that the proverbial powder keg of central Europe in 1914 would not have exploded from another spark a little later. But who knows, and who knows when? The Second Balkan Crisis of 1912–1913 had been resolved peaceably. Perhaps the tiny spark that started the catastrophe of the First World War was the location of the sandwich shop.

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