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History Swings on a Sandwich

A short history lesson. Those of you reading this who graduated high school (and this is the internet, so that’s probably not a large percentage) should remember that WWI began with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and second runner-up for the prestigious Marc Award for Most Awesome Moustache in History.

Look at that thing.  I’m frightened.

The reasonings behind his assassination are not important.  Actually, they are, but they’re not very entertaining.  For narrative purposes, all you need to know is that a certain Serbian group of terrorists, badassly named The Black Hand, wanted him dead.  Among them was a 19-year-old Yugoslav named Gavrilo Princip.  They planned out the assassination carefully, and waited until the Archduke’s convoy passed them in Sarajevo.

They spotted Ferdinand, travelling in an open-topped car (because mankind had not yet learned that an important figure travelling in an open-topped car is a dumb-ass idea). One member of the assassination party threw a bomb that rolled past the targeted car and instead exploded underneath adjacent vehicle, injuring everyone inside.  In the ensuing panic, the Archduke’s car managed to escape, and the assassination attempt had officially failed.

A reception at town hall had already been planned, so Ferdinand headed there, and upon his arrival, told the mayor, “I came here on a visit, and I get bombs thrown at me.  It is outrageous.”  (After which we can only assume he added, “Now… do you have a change of underwear?”)

Once the reception was through, after just having survived an assassination attempt, Ferdinand decided to go to the hospital with his wife and visit the victims of the car bombing.  For reasons that escape this writer’s mind, he decided to once again travel by motorcade.  And in the same car, in the same order the convoy had already used.  Maybe there’s an unwritten code of behavior for survivors of assassination attempts that I’m not aware of, but I’d think if a group of radicals had just tried to blow my ass to shreds, I’d probably try not to recreate the same high-profile conditions that were in place when the shit went down.  But hey… what do I know?

Anyway, Ferdinand’s convoy made its way past the Latin Bridge in Sarajevo.

Meanwhile, after The Black Hand’s assassination attempt had gone to crap, Gavrilo Princip decided on a whim to head out for a little post-failed-assassination-attempt sandwich at Schiller’s Delicatessen, only a few dozen feet from, you guessed it… the Latin Bridge, where Ferdinand’s car had made a wrong turn and was backing up.  Before you could say “pastrami on rye,” Princip had approached the side of the car and blasted that sucker, changing history forever.

Because, the shockwave that the assassination produced led to World War I… which caused the ensuing post-war economic failure in Europe… which led the people of Deutshland to elect as their leader world-renowned asshole and winner of the German Charlie Chaplin look-alike competition, Adolf Hitler, who then started World War II… which ended with the bomb to end all bombs (not really)… which led to the mass panic of the Cold War… which eventually led to The Vietnam Wa—uhmm, Police Action… which ultimately gave us smelly hippies and the guy with no leg who solicits money at the Dadeland South metrorail station.

“Princip, you a-hole!!”

So as we can see, all this death and douchebaggery suffered by mankind in the last century could have been avoided, had Gavrilo Princip not been jonesing for a sandwich.

Though, to be fair, who doesn’t love a good BLT?