- The record for the most patents in U.S history is held by Thomas Edison: 1,093.
- The modern state of Iraq is less than 100 years old; its borders were drawn in 1921 by Gertrude Bell, a middle-aged British woman.
- In 1917, Vladimir Lenin was smuggled from exile in Switzerland to St. Petersburg, Russia by Germany. The Germans, then at war with Russia, hoped Lenin would succeed in a revolutionary takeover and pull Russia out of World War I. He did.
- On March 16, 1916, Francisco "Pancho" Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico and killed 16 Americans. The U.S. Army's Punitive Expedition invaded Mexico and hunted Villa across rugged desert terrain for eleven months. Villa hid in caves and escaped capture.
- Eugene Bullard was America's first black aviator, but he never flew for the United States. Bullard was a fighter pilot with the Lafayette Escadrille, a French squadron of American volunteers during World War I. Bullard became one of France's most decorated heroes, but his effort to join the U.S. Army as a pilot was ignored.
- Humanitarian and doctor, Albert Schweitzer was also considered one of the world's leading authorities on Johann Sebastian Bach. Schweitzer helped raise funds for his African hospital by performing organ concerts in Europe.
- The British army suffered nearly 20,000 men killed and twice that many wounded on just the first day of the battle of the Somme: July 1, 1916.
- In 1919, Universal Pictures, one of Hollywood's largest studios, put Irving Thalberg in charge of production. He was 20 years old.
- On October 15, 1917, Mata Hari was executed by France for being a German spy. Four days later, Georges Ladoux, the French intelligence officer who supervised her and then led the investigation against her, was also arrested for being a German double agent. He was later court-martialed and set free.
- American author Ernest Hemginway drove an ambulance on the Italian front during World War I and suffered 227 leg wounds from an exploding shell.
- Archaeologist Howard Carter searched for the tomb of Tutankhamun for six years before discovering it in 1922. It took another 10 years to remove and catalogue the nearly 5,000 artifacts that filled the tomb.
- When Germany invaded France in May of 1940, Charles de Gaulle, a low-ranking French general, fled to England with his wife and children. Very few heard or believed de Gaulle's declaration on BBC Radio in June that he was head of France's government in exile. Four years later, after Germany was defeated, de Gaulle was named President of France.
- On June 28, 1914, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand survived an assassination attempt on his visit to Sarajevo when a bomb thrown at his car bounced away before exploding. That afternoon, on his way to a hospital visit with victims from the morning's attack, the Archduke's car stalled a few feet from Gavrilo Princip, the assassins' ringleader. Princip stepped forward and shot and killed Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, touching off World War I.
- Writer and director Erich von Stroheim was fired by Universal Pictures in 1922 for making films that ran too long, took too long to make and were grossly over budget. For his next employer, MGM, von Stroheim created a film called Greed, which took two years to make, cost triple its original budget, and ran nine and a half hours on screen.
- Although Prohibiton in America was widely perceived to be a failure, per capita alcohol consumption following Prohibition's repeal was half the level it was prior to the ban.
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones™ & © 1981-2007 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.
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