100 years ago, US entered World War I

This Thursday marks the 100th anniversary when the US formally entered World War One.

The actual declaration came on April 6, 1917, after President Woodrow Wilson’s demand to go to war with Germany was endorsed by Congress.

Despite entering late, 116,000 Americans still died on the battlefield, more than the death tolls in Korea and Vietnam combined.

Also known as the Great War, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is widely regarded as the trigger to one of the world’s most deadly conflicts.

Setting off a diplomatic crisis it pulled in all the great economic powers which had assembled themselves into two opposing alliances.

Beginning in July 1914, it lasted more than four years until November 11, 1918. By its end, or soon after with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires’ had ceased to exist.