The Car of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

On the 28th of June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne was murdered together with his wife Sophie, during a visit to Sarajevo.
The Austria-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 had soured the relations between Serbia and Austria-Hungaria and left many of the Bosnian Serbs longing for a union with Serbia.

During these political tensions Danilo Ilić, a Bosnian Serb gathered a group of six assassins to murder the Archduke. Danilo Ilić was a member of the Black Hand, a secret military society who wanted to create Yugoslavia by uniting all the South Slavic territories under a single banner.

With that goal in mind the assassins were placed along the route that the Archduke's motorcade was to follow on visiting Sarajevo.
The first attempt failed, the bomb that was thrown at the Archduke's car bounced off the folded back convertible and exploded under the car behind him, wounding around 18 people.

Shocked by the attempt on his life, Franz Ferdinand ordered the motorcade to continue at high speed to the Town Hall. The remaining assassins were unable to act upon the quickly moving motorcade.

At the Town Hall the Archduke made the noble, but unfortunately fatal decision to visit the hospital where the wounded of the assassination attempt were taken. On his way to the hospital the driver of Franz Ferdinand was not informed that a new route was to be taken. When the driver was told that he had taken the wrong route, he stopped the car to turn around. By a very unfortunate coincidence he stopped nearby one of the assassins, Gavrilo Princip. Princip had stuck around in the hopes of getting another chance at murdering the Archduke.

On spotting the car, Princip rushed forward and fired two shots from a distance of about 1.5 meter's (4.9feet), mortally wounding the Archduke and the Duchess. The Archduke's last words were "Sophie, Sophie! Don't die! Live for our children! The Duchess died on her way to the hospital.
The Archduke died ten minutes after her.
This event triggered the First World War in which almost twenty million people would lose their lives.

The car, a Gräf & Stift 28/32 PS open sports car in which the couple was assassinated is displayed in the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna. It is quite a special piece of history.
If you take a closer look you can see the bullet holes made by Gavrilo Princip's Belgian-made 9×17mm (.380 ACP) Fabrique Nationale model 1910 semi-automatic pistol.
A memento of a terrible day that plunged the world into four years of death and destruction.