I‘m more than halfway through my reading of The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Volume 1. Yesterday, as I was about to head out to lunch, I said this on Twitter:
I’m pretty sure that World War I will start during my lunchtime walk. I’m creeping up on 1914 in the Churchill biography #amreading
— Jamie Todd Rubin (@jamietr) July 28, 2014
I was referring to the fact that the book was creeping up on the start of the First World War. However, in a remarkable coincidence, it turns out that yesterday, July 28, was exactly 100 years since the official start of World War I back on July 28, 1914. To the day. That is pretty creepy.
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And here I thought you were aiming to do it on purpose…
Believe me, I was surprised. I knew that 2014 was the 100th anniversary of the start of the war, but I had no idea that it was July 28.
That _is_ creepy.
Incidentally, I was talking to my 105 year old grandmother the other day about WWI. She distinctly remembers “the sounds of the sirens and whistles from town the day we declared war”. Blows my mind because that is ancient history, really. I got about 1-2 weeks of WWI education in 10th grade by a tenured teacher whose diction was unintelligible. Therefore I know absolutely nothing about that war.