British rule is consolidated in Nigeria by the merging of north and south as a single colony

A building by Walter Gropius for the Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Cologne brings him international attention

Germany promises to support Austria-Hungary if a strike against Serbia provokes war with Russia

Erskine Childers sails his own yacht from Germany to Ireland with 900 rifles and 14,000 rounds of ammunition for the Irish Volunteers

In response to the tsar's mobilization of his troops, Germany declares war on Russia

Germany and the Ottoman empire sign a secret treaty of alliance

German troops move into Luxembourg and demand passage through neutral Belgium

With her troops already poised to attack, Germany declares war on France

Bound by treaty to defend Belgium, Britain declares war on Germany

A Germany army reaches and enters the Belgian capital, Brussels

Japan, with her own local agenda in the far east, declares war on Germany

A Germany army crosses the river Marne in an advance towards Paris

British planes, taking off from Dunkirk, bomb Cologne railway station and destroy Germany's latest Zeppelin in its great shed at Düsseldorf

Turkey, launching an attack on Russian ports in the Black Sea, enters the war on the German side

The German enclave of Qingdao, in China, falls to the Japanese after a two-month siege

Roger Casement travels to Germany to persuade Irish prisoners of war to change sides and invade Ireland

Einstein submits a paper, The field equations of gravitation, containing the sums required to explain the general theory of relativity

Italy revokes the Triple Alliance of 1882 that aligned her with Germany and Austria-Hungary

Italy declares war against Austria-Hungary, but not as yet against Germany

Dutch aircraft designer Anton Fokker, working for the Germans, vastly improves the Roland Garros technique for firing machine guns through the propellers of fighter planes

The Germans make their first effective use of a new weapon, the flame thrower, in an attack on the British in the second batte of Ypres

Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg found the radical Spartacus League, named after the gladiator

Hitler is wounded in the leg at the Battle of the Somme