Balkan Blunders Reflection

The catalyst or should I say the main reason for the start of WWI was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand which I must say I have never looked into much before. I never realized that as our handout states it, "The terrorists who took world history in their hands in the summer of 1914 were basically a bunch of kids." I actually found it kind of humerous how the entire assassination was carried out. One of the assassins, Mehmed, chickened out as the plan was about to go into action, and was arrested later because of his bragging about his participation in the assassination. Vaso, another assasin, was sent to jail for sixteen years because he was not old enough for the death penalty. Ironically, he became a history teacher after he got out of jail. Another member of the group called the Black Hand was Cvetko Popvic, who became a museum curator after jail. It seems like these so called assassins were really not much more than confused kids looking to prove themselves. The fourth person in line was Nedelko Cabrinovic, who managed to throw a bomb at the Archduke's car but he missed and harmed the crowd instead. What I thought was funny about Cabrinovic was that he attempted to swallow a cyanide capsule and jump in a nearby canal but not knowing that the pill was expired and the river was ankle deep. He was vomiting while he was pulled out of the river. So there was already four chances to kill the Archduke and the remaining members heard the explosion and thought that Ferdinand was taken care of. However, due to an unfortunate series of events, Ferdinand's driver took a wrong turn on the way to the hospital and ran into another one of the assassins, Princip. It was Princip who finally killed both the Archduke and his wife. So it almost seems to me that the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was destined to happen since he dodged his death so many times but in the end died due to a wrong turn from his driver.