Facts about WW1

1. Tanks had genders
At the beginning of the war, tanks were grouped according to their ‘gender’. The male tanks had cannons attached while the females carried machine guns. The prototype tank was named Little Willie.




2. Explosions in France were heard in London
A team of miners worked in secret to dig tunnels under the trenches during the war in order to plant and detonate mines there. The detonations destroyed much of the German front line and were so great, the prime minister then heard the sound in London, 140 miles away.


3. Franz Ferdinand’s licence plate was the cause of a strange coincidence
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated on June 28th 1914, an event which led to the beginning of the war. Strangely, the Archduke’s number plate read: A 111 118, a series that can be read as, Armistice 11 November ‘18.




4. WWI saw pioneering advances in modern medicine
Inspired by the sight of soldiers’ faces ravaged by shrapnel, many of which remained covered by masks, Harold Gillies established the field of plastic surgery, pioneering the first attempts of facial reconstruction. As well as this, blood transfusions became routine to save soldiers, with the first blood bank established on the front line in 1917.

5. The youngest authenticated combatant to serve was only 12Many young men faked their age in order to sign up early. The youngest to do so was Sidney Lewis, who was only 12 years old at the time.









6. 12 million letters were delivered to the front every week
Astonishingly, it only took two days for a letter from Britain to reach the front in France. The journey began at a purpose-built sorting depot in Regent's Park before being shipped to the trenches. By the end of the war, two billion letters and 114 million parcels had had been delivered.

7. Life in the Trenches
80,000 recorded cases of shell shock in the British Army.
10% of all First World War soldiers were killed in the conflict, a higher percentage than any other war in human history.

 

 

8. A soldier which could never sleep
A soldier got shot in the frontal lobe during the world war 1 and as a result he got some abnormality in his sleeping. He was never able to sleep again and now God knows how he spend his rest life. Not sleeping forever is quite a rare disease to happen just because of some sort of abnormality in the brain. 

9. The Great War

The WW1 ended at 11 o'clock in the morning of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.

 

 10. Momčilo Gavrić

Was the youngest soldier in the First World War In the beginning of August 1914, Austro-Hungarian soldiers killed his father, mother, grandmother, his three sisters, and four of his brothers. His house was also set on fire. Momčilo survived because he was not at home when it happened—his father had sent him to his uncle earlier.
Left without family and without a home, Momčilo went to find the 6th Artillery Division of the Serbian army, which was near Gučevo at the time. Major Stevan Tucović, brother of Dimitrije Tucović, accepted Gavrić into his unit after hearing about what had happened, and assigned Miloš Mišović, a soldier in the unit, to be Gavrić's caretaker. The same evening, he took revenge by showing his unit the location of the Austro-Hungarian soldiers, and participated in the bombardment, as told by his son Branislav Gavrić in an interview.
At the age of 8, after the Battle of Cer, he was promoted to the rank of kaplar (Corporal) by the commander of his unit, and given a military uniform