When European nations squared off against each other in the summer of 1914, it’s doubtful that anyone envisioned it would mushroom into a four-year-long conflict that would be vastly more lethal than any previous war on that continent, both for military personnel and civilians.
Major powers such as Britain, France, the U.S. and Germany documented World War I's human cost, but historians have difficulty agreeing on the exact death toll due to the overlapping events of the 1918 flu pandemic and the Armenian genocide.
Despite signing a pact at the dawn of the 20th century banning poison-laden projectiles, military powers used noxious gases to incapacitate or intimidate their enemies during World War I.
The first successful gas attack was launched by the Germans against the British at the Second Battle of Ypres on April 22, 1915, using 170 metric tons of chlorine gas released from 5,700 buried cylinders along the front.
A truce took place on Christmas Eve in 1914, when soldiers from both sides of the Western Front are said to have stopped fighting, sang songs and played soccer with each other for several days. Read more.
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