# data[].attributes.body
During WW1 people thought that placing women on a political equality with men would cause domestic strife.

# data[].attributes.body
The government agreed to pay families of soldiers $30 a month.

# data[].attributes.body
World War 1 sparked the invention and development of plastic surgery and blood banks.

# data[].attributes.body
Censored and suppressed publications, writing, maps, plans, photographs, communications, and means of communications

# data[].attributes.body
Women earned less money than their male counterparts

# data[].attributes.body
How long did the war last?

# data[].attributes.body
The United states benefited the most as the entered the war later on, meaning they didn't lose as many men. It also caused America to become a more industrialized society meaning large scale manufacturing was successful.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Sarajevo, 21st-century version." This is how political scientist Anne-Marie Slaughter, the director of policy planning under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, refers to what is currently brewing off the Chinese coast, where the territorial claims of several nations overlap.

The analogy to the period prior to the outbreak of World War I is striking. China, "the Germany of (that) time," as American historian Robert Kagan puts it, is the emergent world power still seeking to define its role within the global community. At the same time, China is staking its claim to natural resources, intimidating its neighbors and developing massive naval power to secure its trade routes.

In taking these steps, China could easily become a rival to another world power, the United States of America, which would assume the role once played by Great Britain in this historical comparison. Just as the United Kingdom did at the time, the United States is now building alliances with its rival's neighbors. And leaders in Beijing have responded to such attempts to encircle their country with a similar sense of outrage as that displayed by the German Reich.

The current crisis in the East China Sea illustrates once again that there are still lessons to be learned from World War I a century after it began and, upon closer inspection, that politicians on both sides are trying to avoid making the same mistakes. But the current crisis in East Asia diverges from the situation leading up to World War I in one important respect: There is currently no country able to assume the role once played by the United States, which, with its late entry into the war, decided its outcome and eventually outpaced both its winners and losers.

The US's entry into the war in 1917 marked the beginning of its path to becoming a world power. In fact, according to historian Herfried Münkler, this was precisely the goal of some politicians in Washington. Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo, a son-in-law of President Woodrow Wilson, was already forging plans to replace the pound sterling with the dollar as the foremost international reserve currency.

The Nerve Center of the World

But his father-in-law, a lawyer and political scientist, and America's only president to enter politics after serving as the president of a university, had no such prosaic intentions. Wilson, the descendent of Scottish Presbyterians and a staunch idealist, and yet down-to-earth and in many respects, such as his racism, a son of the South, wanted to save the world and end war once and for all.

He failed, of course, with peace lasting only 20 years after World War I. Nevertheless, American politicians today justify military intervention with the same arguments Wilson used to convince the country to put an end to its isolation and intervene in Europe.

But Wilson managed to draw America's attention back to Europe. For the next century, the old continent was more or less at the center of American policy. Only today -- under a president who, like Wilson, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and has a penchant for idealism and stirring speeches -- is Europe apparently sinking into the background once again as Washington responds to the allure of dynamic Asia.

Back then, though, Europe was the nerve center of the world. By the end of 1916, the war had claimed the lives of millions of soldiers, and the warring parties seemed incapable of bringing it to an end. Wilson no other option than to enter the conflict. On Jan. 22, 1917, he explained his ideas about peace to the US Senate. It was the duty of the United States, he said, to help build a structure for permanent peace.

Wilson argued that goal of the war had to be the establishment of "community power" and not a "balance of power," and to achieve "organized common peace" instead of "organized rivalries." In other words, only a "peace without victory" could bring the war in Europe to an end.

In his speech, Wilson staked out his position within the fundamental conflict that characterized American foreign policy at the time. On the one side were the "realists," who believed that America's most important task was to balance the interests of different countries to achieve the most stable equilibrium possible.

Light into the Darkness

The other side consisted of idealists; it was an approach which would later be named after Wilson himself. "Wilsonian foreign policy" is premised on the notion, established in the Puritan days of the founding fathers, that the United States should emulate the Biblical city on the hill, a role model for all other nations. The country has a mission to fulfill: that of bringing light into the darkness of bondage and dependency.

Wilson managed to win over a majority in Congress with his fiery speech. Senator Ben Tillman described it as "the most startling and noblest utterance that has fallen from human lips since the Declaration of Independence." The New York Times called it a "moral transformation" of American policy.

The Germans, who had not been opposed to the idea of peace talks until then, responded nine days later with the resumption of unlimited submarine warfare. When his private secretary, Joseph Tumulty, brought him the news, Wilson's face became pale, and he said: "This means war."

Wilson was inaugurated into his second term on March 5, 1917. The man who had not mentioned foreign policy at all in his inaugural address four years earlier now had only one subject on his mind: war. "We are provincials no longer," he assured his listeners, noting that the struggle for Europe had made the Americans "citizens of the world." Finally, less than a month later, he asked Congress to declare war on Germany. America, he said, was fighting to liberate the peoples of the world, including the Germans. And then he uttered a sentence that US presidents have used again and again to justify military intervention -- no one more clearly and with less credibility than George W. Bush on the eve of the Iraq invasion. "The world must be made safe for democracy," Wilson said.

After the Bolsheviks had overthrown the czarist regime in Russia, Wilson spoke of a war between democracy and the forces of absolutism. German historian Karl Dietrich Erdmann characterized 1917 as an "epochal year in world history." Washington's entry into the war and the October Revolution in Russia, Erdmann argues, ensured that Europe had lost its role as the principal player in world history.

But Wilson was surprised by the positive reception his speech received. "My message today was a message of death for our young men," he told his loyal secretary, Tumulty. "How strange it seems to applaud that." Then the president laid his head on the table and "sobbed as if he was a child," Tumulty reported.

Hearts and Minds

The German general staff had appraised American military strength as being somewhere "between Belgium and Portugal." It wasn't incorrect, but it failed to account for the speed with which the rising industrial power could unleash additional forces. Wilson initially mobilized the navy to counter the threat from German submarines. He was also able to confiscate 97 German and Austrian ships in US ports, which were then used to transport 40,000 soldiers to Europe. About two million more "doughboys" would follow by the fall of 1918.

Wilson made New York financier Bernard Baruch one of his top advisers. Baruch and his associates, recruited from the top ranks of industry, completed their tasks with breathtaking speed. The nominal economic output of the United States doubled between 1914 and 1918. German Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg saw Baruch as the real victor over Germany.

Wilson also fought for the hearts and minds of his fellow Americans. To spread the "gospel of Americanism" to the last corners of the earth, the president set up what amounted to a globally active propaganda agency, the Committee for Public Information (CPI), headed by journalist George Creel. Two decades later, Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels was impressed by Creel's book, "How We Advertised America."

The Espionage Act of 1917 was less harmless. Only last year, it was dug up to justify the government's rigid position against disagreeable whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. The law gave the government far more powers than merely the ability to take foreign agents out of circulation. It gave the government the discretion to determine whether criticism of the war could be treated as high treason. Together with a later amendment, the Espionage Act of 1917 was a comprehensive attack on freedom of speech.

And Wilson, who had always supported liberal causes in domestic policy, took a ruthless approach to dissidents. Some 1,500 Americans were convicted of holding views that diverged from the government's war policy, including Eugene Debs, the presidential candidate of the Socialist Party. Wilson, the son of a minister, was extremely adept at hating. As David Lloyd George, Britain's wartime prime minister, would later say: "Wilson loved mankind but didn't like people."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'We Saved the World': WWI and America's Rise as a Superpower - SPIEGEL ONLINE - International

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
America's rise to superpower status began with its 1917 entry into World War I. President Woodrow Wilson had grand visions for the peace that followed, but failed. The battle he started in the US between idealists and realists continues to this day.

# data[].attributes.body
Nurses were nicknamed the bluebirds by soldiers, due to the blue dresses and white veils the nurses wore.

# data[].attributes.body
The law was meant to protect the nation from threats or wars for the security, defence, peace, order and welfare of Canada

# data[].attributes.body
During this time, children did not have much time to have fun. They worked hard at a young age, helping their parents with the chores.

# data[].attributes.body
Canada would have to pay $164 million per year to pay off their debt.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Canada's Economy Effected by WWI - Canada's Total War in WWI

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hello and welcome to our digital museum. This website was created on April 16, 2013 for our Social project on World War I.

# data[].attributes.body
How could large British fleet both provide security and yet be potentially dangerous for Britain

# data[].attributes.body
A number of posters worldwide were used to get more people to volunteer and join the army.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Judith has a long standing interest in World War 1 and has spent many hours researching the lives of the men of her town who fell in WW1.

The Growth of Propaganda

Propaganda was being used long before the outbreak of World War One, but the use of posters, rather than handbills, was pioneered during the war. Almost from the outset, the British government, through the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, set about producing posters to swell the ranks of Britain's small professional army with volunteers.

The first posters relied simply on text to get their message across; as the war progressed the posters become increasingly sophisticated with artists using striking images to convey pro-war messages. Although recruitmentwas the initial focus for posters, they were also employed to:

promote patriotism,

justify the war,

raise money,

procure resources, and

promote accepted standards of behaviour.

Often these themes crossed over, for instance with patriotic images being woven into efforts to recruit men and raise money.

J M Flagg's Propaganda Posters

James Montgomery Flagg, who designed the Uncle Sam poster above, was one of America's most celebrated propaganda poster artists. Find out more about J M Flagg and his work for the war effort.

Rampant Patriotism During the War

One of the keys to success in any war is maintaining morale, both on the front line and on the home front. During the World War One, there were constant rallying calls around patriotism and nationalism, reminding people that they were fighting for a greater cause than themselves: their country, its freedom and all that it held dear. Posters were often awash with patriotic stereotypes and stirring slogans.

British Empire posters naturally featured images of the British lion, Britannia and John Bull, often adorned with a Union Flag. The US posters depicted Uncle Sam (see above), American Pit Bull Terriers (how times change), the American Eagle and Statue of Liberty. "Duty", "Freedom" and "God Save the King" were all recurring themes.

Raising Money During World War 1

Wars are costly in terms of people and money. Recruitment posters took care of the former, but as the war dragged on governments increasingly advertised to raise funds. Often these urged people to buy government bonds and were sometimes linked to a patriotic duty message, like the poster above, targeting immigrants to the USA.

As well as raising money via government savings schemes, some posters appealed for money to help refugees. This was also helped justify the war; the good people of the USA and Britain helping the victims of the dreadful Germans. In contrast the brash colours of the patriotic recruitment posters, these images are subdued. Boardman Robinson's poster for the Serbian Relief Fund in New York shows a group of Serbians in muted tones, as though their ordeal has bled them of all colour.

From Socks to Spy-Glasses

Finding men and money for the war effort wasn't enough. With factories understaffed many essentials couldn't be manufactured so the government had to appeal for donations. One area that was lacking was clothing. Troops were short of socks, so the womenfolk left behind set about knitting them and sending them to the lads at the front.

Perhaps more odd was the appeal for spy-glasses and binoculars for the Navy. Gordon Grant paints an alarming picture of a blind-folded captain on the deck of his ship, unable to see the enemy. A crewman tries to direct him from the background to no avail. The people of America are invited to help by donating their unused binoculars and spy-glasses, for which they will be paid a dollar. Amazingly, Franklin D Roosevelt also undertakes to return the items where possible, and asks people to tag them accordingly.

Promoting Acceptable Wartime Behaviour

Soldiers expect to conform to strict discipline, but during war time governments also try to extend their influence over the lives of civilians too. People were exhorted to get out of bed an hour earlier to keep production up, save fuel and set traps for rats that might eat vital food supplies.

Food is always an issue during war time. With men away at war and imports disrupted, production inevitably falls. There were many posters advising people on how to use their rations sensibly. John E Sheridan's poster is a reminder of why rationing was vital, drawing a comparison between food and ammunition. His message is simple but effective; soldiers don't waste their ammunition, don't let them down by wasting your food.

World War One Posters as Art

The posters used in World War One were designed to be a cheap, mass produced source of short term propaganda. They have become more than that. A few are iconic (who does not recognise that pointing finger, whether it is Kitchener's or Uncle Sam's?), many of the images are beautiful in their own right, some capture an era that fascinates many and others provide a record of a time that will not be forgotten. Nowadays, many people appreciate the appeal of these posters and collect them as art.

The tragedy is that these were not the last propaganda posters to roll off the printing presses; World War Two was to produce its own catalogue of propaganda posters.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Were Propaganda Posters Used in World War 1?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Judith has a long standing interest in World War 1 and has spent many hours researching the lives of the men of her town who fell in WW1. Propaganda was being used long before the outbreak of World War One, but the use of posters, rather than handbills, was pioneered during the war.

# data[].attributes.body
Locating icebergs using sound waves while traveling on a ship

# data[].attributes.body
The machine gun has been introduced in world war 1 which revolutionized the weaponry at the time.

# data[].attributes.body
What are flamethrowers?

# data[].attributes.body
Canada was automatically involved when Britain declared war on Germany.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Citation: C N Trueman "Canada and World War One"
historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, . .

Troops from Canada played a prominent part in World War One. Canada was part of the British Empire in 1914. As a result of this, when Great Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914, Canada was automatically at war. Along with other nations in the Empire, such as Australia and India, tens of thousands of Canadians joined the army in the first few months of the war. They along with so many other men had to endure the hardships that came with trench warfare and face the dangers of modern weaponry. Trench warfare was noted for its static nature. Lessons had been learned by the Allies from the failure of the 1916 Somme Offensive and in 1917 a new offensive was planned on German positions around Arras. Canadian troops were tasked with capturing the strategically important Vimy Ridge.

Vimy Ridge was important as it was the highest point in the region. At ten miles long, both Germans and British and French troops had fought for it on several occasions. However, the Germans had maintained their control over the ridge and this gave them a strategic advantage over the Allies in the region.

While there had been extensive planning for the Somme Offensive, there had also been a number of planning shortfalls. One of these was the simple expectation that the whole-front attack would work and nothing was built into the plan about what to do if the plan failed. The answer to the first day's failings was to simply launch further attacks the next day and for weeks and months after this. At the end of the Battle of the Somme, the Allied high command recognised that its armies could not sustain such casualties again. Therefore the planning for the 1917 offensive was as tight as was possible and was coupled with a great deal of training.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge started on April 9 th 1917 and it was the first time that all four divisions of the Canadian Corps operated together as one unit. Prior to the attack, the Canadians had trained extensively and used large-scale models of the trench systems that the Germans had built along the ridge. While trenches gave troops some degree of shelter and protection, they were an obvious scar on the landscape and could be easily seen by reconnaissance aircraft. Hence why the Canadians had a very good idea where the German trenches were and where their supply lines fed into them. Tunnels were also dug underneath German frontline trenches. The ends of these tunnels were packed with explosives, which were exploded immediately before the attack by the infantry took place.

Some Canadian troops were also housed in tunnels dug underground for their safety. These became their living space prior to the battle. These tunnels still exist as do the carvings on the tunnel walls made by the troops to their loved ones. These tunnels had water piped to them and electricity. However, in letters posted home before the Battle of Vimy Ridge it is clear that some Canadians were not keen on their home prior to the battle as they complained of feeling claustrophobic.

Before the battle started, German positions were bombarded by one million artillery in what the Germans called "the Week of Suffering". This artillery bombardment had been planned by Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew MacNaughton. He helped to develop new ways to detect German artillery guns. When they fired back in retaliation, MacNaughton used new optical and acoustic techniques to detect where these guns were and once he had decided on their position, he ordered an artillery barrage on that position to devastating effect.

The planning and training for the battle paid dividends. An accurate rolling (creeping) barrage gave cover to the first wave of Canadian troops. This first wave was tasked with going passed the first line of trenches and pushing ahead with the attack. The follow- up of Canadian troops was tasked with clearing out the first trench system. By using this form of advance - the first wave pushing passed a trench system, which had been thrown into disarray by the attack, and leaving the enemy in those trenches to the next wave that arrived almost immediately - the Canadians pushed right through the German positions on Vimy Ridge.

The highest point of Vimy Ridge was called 'Hill 145'. This heavily defended position was captured just one day after the start of the attack - on April 10 th. On April 12 th, the Canadians captured 'The Pimple', another high point on Vimy Ridge. Shortly after this, the Germans withdrew two miles from Vimy Ridge. By the standards of the Western Front - bogged down by static warfare for months on end - this was a huge achievement. However, the area had been heavily defended by the Germans and the Canadians suffered heavy losses of 10,602 men (more than a third of the attacking army) with 3,598 killed.

Four Canadian soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery at the battle: Private William Milne, Private John Pattison, Lance-Sergeant Ellis Sifton and Captain Thain MacDowell. All four were credited with capturing German machine gun positions.

More than 600,000 Canadians fought in World War One with 60,000 killed and 170,000 wounded. In recognition of the part played by Canadians during the war, Canada had its own representatives at the Treaty of Versailles and while Canada remained a part of the British Empire, the Canadian delegation signed the treaty as a separate nation.

April 2012

report this ad

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Canada and World War One - History Learning Site

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Troops from Canada played a prominent part in World War One. Canada was part of the British Empire in 1914. As a result of this, when Great Britain declared wa

# data[].attributes.body
During WWI, rations were limited and unappetizing. Fresh food was sparse and people who weren't participating in the war were given a list of how much food they could buy. - click the link below!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As the war progressed, fresh fruit, vegetables and meat got harder to come by. There were even stories of butchers selling dead cats!

Bread and flour were hard to find and government posters encouraged people to eat less bread (see posters).The winter of 1916 saw a major shortage of flour. It was replaced by dried, ground-up turnips which produced unappetising, diarrhoea-inducing bread.

Wartime cookbooks had ideas for recipes that used leftovers and rationed food like 'potted cheese' - leftover crumbs of cheese, mixed with mustard and margarine, baked in the oven and served with biscuits or toast. Another recipe used cooked fish, rice, and breadcrumbs to make 'fish sausages'.

'The Win-the-War Cookery Book' carried this message: 'Women of Britain ... Our soldiers are beating the Germans on land. Our sailors are beating them on the sea. You can beat them in the larder and the kitchen.'

In 1918, Britain began rationing to try and make food more equal. Everyone was provided with a ration book that showed how much food they were allowed to buy, including sugar, meat, flour, butter, margarine and milk. Even King George and Queen Mary had rationbooks! Richer families understood what it was like to be hungry whereas some of the poorest families found that rationing left them better-fed than before the war.

Wartime also produced some new foods: dried soup powder, and custard that just needed water adding (like instant custard and soups which are now found in the supermarkets!).
Food in East Sussex
In August 1914, war was declared as the harvest was under way in East Sussex. When war was first declared, it was thought that food supplies would remain unaffected and Sussex farmers would counter increasing corn prices by simply growing more wheat and oats whilst patriotically plough difficult, old and disused war was declared as the harvest was under way in East Sussex. When war was first declared, it was thought that food supplies would remain unaffected and Sussex farmers would counter increasing corn prices by simply growing more wheat and oats whilst patriotically plough difficult, old and disused grassland for human food. By the middle of 1915, however, it became clear that state intervention in farming was required, on a scale never before contemplated!

Arable (crop) farming had declined since 1875, with a generation of farmers growing up with dairying and livestock on grassland farms. This trend had to change quickly, but the workforce was in short supply as young men enlisted and went to war. Horses were being used to assist with ploughing and heavy-duty work. The increased use of animals meant that more animal food had to be imported, but the importation of animal feed and fertilisers was threatened by U-Boat activities, and mechanised farming was in early stages.
Food at the Front
In 1916, the staple food of the British soldier was pea-soup with horse-meat chunks. The hard-working kitchen teams were having to source local vegetables. When they couldn't, weeds, nettles, and leaves would be used to flavor soups and stews.

Two industrial-sized vats were assigned to each battalion for food preparation. The problem was that every type of meal was prepared within these containers, and so, over time (because they couldn't be washed properly in between meals), everything started to taste the same. Pea-and-horse flavoured tea was something the soldiers had to get used to!

Food transportation was another issue. By the time it reached the front, bread and biscuits had turned stale and other produce had gone off. Soldiers had to crumble the hard food that arrived and add potatoes, sultanas, and onions to soften the mixture up. This concoction would then be boiled in a sandbag and eaten as a sandy, stale soup.

One widely-used but widely-disliked ration was the canned soup, Maconochie. It was a thin and watery broth containing sliced turnips and carrots, Maconochie was endured by famished soldiers, and detested by all. One soldier summed up the army's attitude towards it by saying, 'Warmed in the tin, Machonochie was edible; cold it was a man-killer.'

Of course, to allow the Germans to hear of this desperate food situation would not do. The British Army had to be depicted as a happy, well-fed, strong-minded group whose morale was resolute. An army announcement that British soldiers were being given two hot meals a day, however, caused widespread outrage among soldiers. The army subsequently received over 200,000 angry letters demanding that the grim truth be made public.
Sources:
Food supply during the war by Professor Brian Short, University of Sussex

Home front food - BBC Schools

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Food during the First World War - WW1 East Sussex

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As the war progressed, fresh fruit, vegetables and meat got harder to come by. There were even stories of butchers selling dead cats! Bread and flour were hard to find and government posters encouraged people to eat less bread (see posters).The winter of 1916 saw a major shortage of flour.

# data[].attributes.headline
Why were Females unable to Fight for their Country?

# data[].attributes.subject
Why were Females unable to Fight for their Country?

# data[].attributes.body
Seeing something like this would probably get people thinking about volunteering.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Erik Sass has been covering the events leading up to World War I exactly 100 years after they happened. But today he's here to discuss some inventions of The Great War.

1. Tanks

In 1914, the "war of movement" expected by most European generals settled down into an unexpected, and seemingly unwinnable, war of trenches. With machine guns reinforcing massed rifle fire from the defending trenches, attackers were mowed down by the thousands before they could even get to the other side of "no-man's-land."

A solution presented itself, however, in the form of the automobile, which took the world by storm after 1900. Powered by a small internal combustion engine burning diesel or gas, a heavily-armored vehicle could advance even in the face of overwhelming small arms fire. Add some serious guns and replace the wheels with armored treads to handle rough terrain, and the tank was born.

The first tank, the British Mark I, was designed in 1915 and first saw combat at the Somme in September 1916. The French soon followed suit with the Renault FT, which established the classic tank look (turret on top). Despite their later prowess in tank combat in WWII, the Germans never got around to large-scale tank production in WWI, although they did produce 21 tanks in the unwieldy A7V model.

2. Flamethrowers

Although the Byzantines and Chinese used weapons that hurled flaming material in the medieval period, the first design for a modern flamethrower was submitted to the German Army by Richard Fiedler in 1901, and the devices were tested by the Germans with an experimental detachment in 1911. Their true potential was only realized during trench warfare, however. After a massed assault on enemy lines, it wasn't uncommon for enemy soldiers to hole up in bunkers and dugouts hollowed into the side of the trenches. Unlike grenades, flamethrowers could "neutralize" (i.e. burn alive) enemy soldiers in these confined spaces without inflicting structural damage (the bunkers might come in handy for the new residents). The flamethrower was first used by German troops near Verdun in February 1915.

3. Poison Gas

Getty Images
Poison gas was used by both sides with devastating results (well, sometimes) during the Great War. The Germans pioneered the large-scale use of chemical weapons with a gas attack on Russian positions on January 31, 1915, during the Battle of Bolimov, but low temperatures froze the poison (xylyl bromide) in the shells. The first successful use of chemical weapons occurred on April 22, 1915, near Ypres, when the Germans sprayed chlorine gas from large cylinders towards trenches held by French colonial troops. The defenders fled, but typically for the First World War, this didn't yield a decisive result: the Germans were slow to follow up with infantry attacks, the gas dissipated, and the Allied defenses were restored. Before long, of course, the Allies were using poison gas too, and over the course of the war both sides resorted to increasingly insidious compounds to beat gas masks, another new invention; thus the overall result was a huge increase in misery for not much change in the strategic situation (a recurring theme of the war).

4. Tracer Bullets

While the Great War involved a lot of futile activity, fighting at night was especially unproductive because there was no way to see where you were shooting. Night combat was made somewhat easier by the British invention of tracer bullets-rounds which emitted small amounts of flammable material that left a phosphorescent trail. The first attempt, in 1915, wasn't actually that useful, as the trail was "erratic" and limited to 100 meters, but the second tracer model developed in 1916, the .303 SPG Mark VIIG, emitted a regular bright green-white trail and was a real hit (get it?). Its popularity was due in part to an unexpected side-benefit: the flammable agent could ignite hydrogen, which made it perfect for "balloon-busting" the German zeppelins then terrorizing England.

5. Interrupter Gear

Airplanes had been around for just a decade when WWI started, and while they had obvious potential for combat applications as an aerial platform for bombs and machine guns, it wasn't quite clear how the latter would work, since the propeller blades got in the way. In the first attempt, the U.S. Army basically tied the gun to the plane (pointing towards the ground) with a leather strap, and it was operated by a gunner who sat beside the pilot. This was not ideal for aerial combat and inconvenient because it required two airmen to operate. Another solution was mounting the gun well above the pilot, so the bullets cleared the propeller blades, but this made it hard to aim. After the Swiss engineer Franz Schneider patented his idea for an interrupter gear in 1913, a finished version was presented by Dutch designer Anthony Fokker, whose "synchronizer," centered on a cam attached to the propeller shaft, allowed a machine gun to fire between the blades of a spinning propeller. The Germans adopted Fokker's invention in May 1915, and the Allies soon produced their own versions. Schneider later sued Fokker for patent infringement.

6. Air traffic control

In the first days of flight, once a plane left the ground the pilot was pretty much isolated from the terrestrial world, unable to receive any information aside from obvious signals using flags or lamps. This changed thanks to the efforts of the U.S. Army, which installed the first operational two-way radios in planes during the Great War (but prior to U.S. involvement). Development began in 1915 at San Diego, and by 1916 technicians could send a radio telegraph over a distance of 140 miles; radio telegraph messages were also exchanged between planes in flight. Finally, in 1917, for the first time a human voice was transmitted by radio from a plane in flight to an operator on the ground.

7. Depth Charges

The German U-boat campaign against Allied shipping sank millions of tons of cargo and killed tens of thousands of sailors and civilians, forcing the Allies to figure out a way to combat the submarine menace. The solution was the depth charge, basically an underwater bomb that could be lobbed from the deck of a ship using a catapult or chute. Depth charges were set to go off at a certain depth by a hydrostatic pistol that measured water pressure, insuring the depth charge wouldn't damage surface vessels, including the launch ship. After the idea was sketched out in 1913, the first practical depth charge, the Type D, was produced by the Royal Navy's Torpedo and Mine School in January 1916. The first German U-boat sunk by depth charge was the U-68, destroyed on March 22, 1916.

8. Hydrophones

Of course it was a big help if you could actually locate the U-boat using sound waves, which required a microphone that could work underwater, or hydrophone. The first hydrophone was invented by 1914 by Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian inventor who actually started working on the idea as a way to locate icebergs following the Titanic disaster; however, it was of limited use because it couldn't tell the direction of an underwater object, only the distance. The hydrophone was further improved by the Frenchman Paul Langevin and Russian Constantin Chilowsky, who invented an ultrasound transducer relying on piezoelectricity, or the electric charge held in certain minerals: a thin layer of quartz held between two metal plates responded to tiny changes in water pressure resulting from sound waves, allowing the user to determine both the distance and direction of an underwater object. The hydrophone claimed its first U-boat victim in April 1916. A later version perfected by the Americans could detect U-boats up to 25 miles away.

9. Aircraft Carriers

The first time an airplane was launched from a moving ship was in May 1912, when commander Charles Rumney Samson piloted a Short S.27 pontoon biplane from a ramp on the deck of the HMS Hibernia in Weymouth Bay. However, the Hibernia wasn't a true aircraft carrier, since planes couldn't land on its deck; they had to set down on the water and then be retrieved, slowing the whole process considerably. The first real aircraft carrier was the HMS Furious, which began life as a 786-foot-long battle cruiser equipped with two massive 18-inch guns-until British naval designers figured out that these guns were so large they might shake the ship to pieces. Looking for another use for the vessel, they built a long platform capable of both launching and landing airplanes. To make more room for takeoffs and landings, the airplanes were stored in hangars under the runway, as they still are in modern aircraft carriers. Squadron Commander Edward Dunning became the first person to land a plane on a moving ship when he landed a Sopwith Pup on the Furious on August 2, 1917.

10. Pilotless Drones

The first pilotless drone was developed for the U.S. Navy in 1916 and 1917 by two inventors, Elmer Sperry and Peter Hewitt, who originally designed it as an unmanned aerial bomb-essentially a prototype cruise missile. Measuring just 18.5 feet across, with a 12-horsepower motor, the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Aircraft weighed 175 pounds and was stabilized and directed ("piloted" is too generous) with gyroscopes and a barometer to determine altitude. The first unmanned flight in history occurred on Long Island on March 6, 1918. In the end, the targeting technique-point and fly-was too imprecise for it to be useful against ships during the war. Further development, by attempting to integrate remote radio control, continued for several years after the war, until the Navy lost interest in 1925.

11. Mobile X-Ray Machines

With millions of soldiers suffering grievous, life-threatening injuries, there was obviously a huge need during the Great War for the new wonder weapon of medical diagnostics, the X-ray-but these required very large machines that were both too bulky and too delicate to move. Enter Marie Curie, who set to work creating mobile X-ray stations for the French military immediately after the outbreak of war; by October 1914, she had installed X-ray machines in several cars and small trucks which toured smaller surgical stations at the front. By the end of the war there were 18 of these "radiologic cars" or "Little Curies" in operation. African-American inventor Frederick Jones developed an even smaller portable X-ray machine in 1919 (Jones also invented refrigeration units, air conditioning units, and the self-starting gasoline lawnmower).

12. Sanitary Napkins

Women traditionally improvised all kinds of disposable or washable undergarments to deal with their monthly period, all the way back to softened papyrus in ancient Egypt. But the modern sanitary napkin as we know it was made possible by the introduction of new cellulose bandage material during the First World War; it wasn't long before French nurses figured out that clean, absorbent cellulose bandages were far superior to any predecessors. British and American nurses picked up on the habit, and corporate America wasn't far behind: In 1920, Kimberly-Clark introduced the first commercial sanitary napkin, Kotex (that's "cotton" + "texture"). But it was rough going at first, as no publications would carry advertisements for such a product. It wasn't until 1926 that Montgomery Ward broke the barrier, carrying Kotex napkins in its popular catalogue.

Subscribe to our Newsletter!

ABDESIGN/iStock via Getty Images

Hurricane Dorian skimmed the United States' East Coast last week, creating a trail of damage residents are still dealing with. But it wasn't just trash and debris the storm surges left behind: As WCSC reports, two cannonballs dating back to the Civil War were discovered on Folly Beach in South Carolina in the aftermath of the storm.

Aaron Lattin and his girlfriend Alba were walking on the beach on September 6 when they saw what looked like rocks nestled in the sand. As they examined them more closely, they realized they had found something much more special. The weathered objects were actually cannonballs that have likely been buried in the area for more than 150 years.

Incredibly, this isn't the first time Civil War cannonballs have been discovered on Folly Beach following a hurricane: In 2016, Hurricane Matthew unearthed 16 of them. Folly Island was used as a Union base a century and a half ago, and items leftover from the artillery battery built there are still scattered around the shoreline. The couple behind this latest discovery believes there are more waiting to be found.

Old cannonballs may look like cool artifacts to treasure hunters, but they should still be treated with caution. Police and bombs disposal technicians were called to the scene at Folly Beach to confirm the cannonballs were no longer functional.

It was after midnight on May 15, 1918 when William Henry Johnson began to hear the rustling. Johnson was a long way from his home in Albany, New York, guarding a bridge in the Argonne Forest in Champagne, France. Sleeping next to him was Needham Roberts, a fellow soldier. Both men had enlisted in the New York National Guard just a few months earlier and were now part of the French Army, donated by U.S. forces to their understaffed allies in the thick of World War I.

As Johnson continued hearing the strange noises late into the night, he urged his partner to get up. A tired Roberts waved him off, believing Johnson was just nervous. Johnson decided to prepare himself just in case, piling up his assortment of grenades and rifle cartridges within arm's reach. If someone was coming, he would be ready.

The rustling continued. At one point, Johnson heard a clipping noise-what he suspected was the sound of the perimeter fence being cut. He again told Roberts to wake up. "Man," he said, "You better wake up pretty soon or you [might] never wake up."

The two began lobbing grenades into the darkness, hoping to discourage whoever might be lurking around the perimeter. Suddenly, in the middle of the French forest, Johnson saw dozens of German soldiers come charging, bayonets pointed toward him. They began to fire.

What transpired over the next hour would become an act of heroism that prompted former President Theodore Roosevelt to declare Johnson one of the bravest Americans to take up arms in the war. Johnson would even lead a procession back in New York City, with crowds lined up along the street to greet him.

Johnson may or may not have felt like a hero, though he certainly was. But he must have also felt something else-a sense of confusion. A man of color, he had been dispatched to a segregated regiment, where he received paltry combat training and was assigned menial tasks like unloading trucks. Even his homecoming parade was split up according to race. Henry Johnson, decorated virtually head to toe in French military honors, returned to a country that considered him both hero and a second-class citizen.

Though officers would later verify much of Johnson's account of that night in the woods, his early life is harder to pin down. It has been reported that Johnson himself wasn't quite sure when he was born. No one appeared to have kept a close eye on his birth certificate, which came out of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The official U.S. Army website honoring Johnson's service lists an approximate birth date of July 15, 1892. Other research indicates he could have been born as early as 1887 or as late as 1897.

After moving to New York as a teenager, Johnson took on an assortment of odd jobs; he was a chauffeur and a soda mixer, among other occupations. Depending on the account, he was living in Albany working either in a coal yard or as a railway porter when he opened a newspaper in the spring of 1917 and read that the 15th New York Infantry Regiment of the New York National Guard was accepting enlistees. The regiment was comprised entirely of black soldiers.

Johnson showed up on June 5, 1917, weighing a slight 130 pounds and standing 5 feet, 4 inches tall. Assigned to Company C of the 15th-which later became known as the 369th U.S. Infantry Regiment-he was quickly dispatched to Camp Wadsworth in South Carolina, where he trained along with the rest of the segregated unit. Though minorities had served in the U.S. military since the Revolutionary War, they often lacked support from officials and got inferior training compared to their white counterparts. At Camp Wadsworth, Johnson was said to have been used primarily as labor, unloading supplies and digging latrines. If there was one bright spot during this time, it was that he married his wife, Georgina Edna Jackson, that September.

Johnson and the 369th were sent to France on January 1, 1918. There they continued laboring, which frustrated their commander, Colonel William Hayward. Hayward lobbied his superiors to give his men a chance in combat. Since France was experiencing a shortage of men, the 369th-which later became known as the Harlem Hellfighters because many of their members had come from Harlem in New York City-joined the 161st Division of the French Army, even wearing the jackets and helmets of the foreign military.

To the French, Johnson and his fellow soldiers were a welcome solution to their lack of manpower. Sent to the front lines in March 1918, Johnson and the others learned enough French to understand commands from superiors. They were armed with rifles and held on to the bolo knives used by the U.S. Army. The imposing 14-inch blades weighed more than a pound and had much of their weight running along the back, giving them a cleaving action similar to a machete. Johnson would soon be glad he had such a weapon on his waist.

Along with Needham Roberts-a man from Trenton, New Jersey-Johnson was assigned sentry duty on the western edge of the Argonne Forest. Patrolling near a bridge, Johnson and Roberts were given the late shift, on patrol until midnight on the evening of May 14. It would be a night neither he nor Roberts would ever forget.

As their shift wound down, Johnson saw two relief soldiers approaching. The soldiers were young and inexperienced, and Johnson felt uncomfortable leaving them alone. He stayed put and surveyed the area while Roberts went to rest in a trench. Shortly thereafter, he began to hear the rustling noises, which eventually became German soldiers rushing through the darkness. Johnson realized they were surrounded, and urged Roberts to run for help. But Roberts didn't get far before he decided to come back and help, and was soon hit by the shrapnel of a grenade in his arm and hip.

Still conscious, Roberts handed Johnson grenades to toss. When those ran out, Johnson began firing his rifle while being hit by bullets in his side, hand, and head. Quickly, Johnson shoved an American cartridge into his French rifle, but the ammunition and the weapon were incompatible. The rifle jammed. As the Germans swarmed him, Johnson began using the rifle like a club, smashing it over their heads and into their faces.

After the butt of the rifle finally fell apart, Johnson went down with a blow to the head. But he climbed back up, drew his bolo knife, and charged forward. The blade went deep into the first German he encountered, killing the man. More gruesome work with the weapon followed, with Johnson hacking and stabbing bodies even as bullets continued to strike him.

At one point, Johnson noticed the Germans had grabbed Roberts and were attempting to haul him away. He intervened, stabbing more soldiers, including one in the ribs.

The melee went on for roughly an hour, he said. When reinforcements finally arrived, the remaining Germans fled. Johnson was given medical attention. So was Roberts. Both lived.

The next day, military officials visited the scene of the battle. German helmets rested on the ground, along with puddles of blood. Four bodies were left behind. The officials estimated Johnson had wounded up to 24 others. Some men who walked the site said the death toll was six, with Johnson injuring 32 men. After all the fighting, Johnson had prevented the Germans from breaking the French line.

The nicknames came fast. The bridge was declared "the Battle of Henry Johnson." Johnson himself was given the unofficial label "the Black Death" and the official rank of sergeant. He was headed back home.

Before they departed, the French honored Johnson and Roberts with the Croix de Guerre, one of France's highest awards for valor. They were the first two Americans to receive it. Johnson's was amended with the addition of the Gold Palm, intended to signify extraordinary valor.

It was an honor, though one that came with a heavy price. Johnson later estimated he had been shot five times, the bullets striking both feet, his thigh, his arm, and even his head. A scar stretched over his lip. A bayonet had been plunged into his torso-twice. He had to have a metal plate inserted into his left foot. In all, Johnson endured 21 injuries as a result of his defiant stand against the Germans.

Back home, he convalesced as the country sang his praises. Often, such reports of his bravery took pains to note he was a man of color. "When proudly speaking of fighting races we must not overlook the American Negro," read an editorial in the New York Evening Telegram. Other times, Johnson found himself in the peculiar position of being celebrated while simultaneously being reminded of his purportedly inferior status. The parade that honored the Harlem Hellfighters in February 1919 ran for seven miles, with Johnson leading the procession in an open-topped cab. But the Hellfighters could not march with their white counterparts.

Unfortunately, Johnson's postwar life remains as murky as his earliest years. He reportedly received disability payments from the government as well as medical care, but it's unknown to what extent that supported him or how badly his injuries kept him from employment opportunities. (He did ask for, and received, as much as $100 per minute during speaking engagements in cities such as St. Louis-well over $1000 in today's money.) An attempt was made by the Albany Afro-American Association to raise money to build him a home as a way of expressing gratitude for his service, but it's unclear whether the effort was successful. On July 1, 1929, Johnson died of myocarditis (an inflammation of the heart muscle) while living in Washington, D.C. He was awarded a posthumous Purple Heart in 1996.

For years, it was unclear what became of Johnson's remains. In 2002, when the historians at the New York Division of Military and Naval Affairs researched his service at the behest of his descendants (though it was later discovered they were mistaken and not actually related to Johnson), the historians determined Johnson was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. With confirmation of the gravesite, Johnson also became eligible for and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 2002.

In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded him the Medal of Honor, which was accepted on Johnson's behalf by Sergeant Major Louis Wilson of the New York National Guard. And every June 5, Albany celebrates Henry Johnson Day in acknowledgement of the day he enlisted. The city also gives out a Henry Johnson Award for Distinguished Community Service for those making contributions in the area.

Those honors joined the Croix de Guerre, which Johnson was said to have worn with humility. He sometimes needed to be prodded into discussing his act of bravery, as if it were of no major consequence. "There wasn't anything so fine about it," he said. "[I] just fought for my life. A rabbit would have done that."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
12 Technological Advancements of World War I

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Erik Sass has been covering the events leading up to World War I exactly 100 years after they happened. But today he's here to discuss some inventions of The Great War. 1. Tanks In 1914, the "war of movement" expected by most European generals settled down into an unexpected, and seemingly unwinnable, war of trenches.

# data[].attributes.body
After WW1 the whole world changed, this war brought change all over the world. Countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa saw drastic political, cultural, economic, and social change.

# data[].attributes.body
The sheer numbers of deaths that occurred during the war were astounding.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The casualties suffered by the participants in World War I dwarfed those of previous wars: some 8,500,000 soldiers died as a result of wounds and/or disease. The greatest number of casualties and wounds were inflicted by artillery, followed by small arms, and then by poison gas. The bayonet, which was relied on by the prewar French Army as the decisive weapon, actually produced few casualties. War was increasingly mechanized from 1914 and produced casualties even when nothing important was happening. On even a quiet day on the Western Front, many hundreds of Allied and German soldiers died. The heaviest loss of life for a single day occurred on July 1, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, when the British Army suffered 57,470 casualties.

Sir Winston Churchill once described the battles of the Somme and Verdun, which were typical of trench warfare in their futile and indiscriminate slaughter, as being waged between double or triple walls of cannons fed by mountains of shells. In an open space surrounded by masses of these guns large numbers of infantry divisions collided. They fought in this dangerous position until battered into a state of uselessness. Then they were replaced by other divisions. So many men were lost in the process and shattered beyond recognition that there is a French monument at Verdun to the 150,000 unlocated dead who are assumed to be buried in the vicinity.

This kind of war made it difficult to prepare accurate casualty lists. There were revolutions in four of the warring countries in 1918, and the attention of the new governments was shifted away from the grim problem of war losses. A completely accurate table of losses may never be compiled. The best available estimates of World War I military casualties are assembled in Table 4.
Armed forces mobilized and casualties in World War I*
*As reported by the U.S. War Department in February 1924. U.S. casualties as amended by the Statistical Services Center, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Nov. 7, 1957.
John Graham Royde-Smith The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Similar uncertainties exist about the number of civilian deaths attributable to the war. There were no agencies established to keep records of these fatalities, but it is clear that the displacement of peoples through the movement of the war in Europe and in Asia Minor, accompanied as it was in 1918 by the most destructive outbreak of influenza in history, led to the deaths of large numbers. It has been estimated that the number of civilian deaths attributable to the war was higher than the military casualties, or around 13,000,000. These civilian deaths were largely caused by starvation, exposure, disease, military encounters, and massacres.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The casualties suffered by the military in World War I are estimated to be about 8,500,000 soldiers who died as a result of wounds and/or disease. The number of civilian deaths is uncertain but has been estimated to be around 13,000,000, largely caused by starvation, exposure, disease, military encounters, and massacres.