Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and

Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book,

all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. It would be over by Christmas. That was what everyone said when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his beloved wife Sophie were assassinated in 1914.

Their marriage wasn't supposed to happen.

As the sitting emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,

France Joseph disapproved of his nephew and heir's choice.

But true love won out and the happy couple were married for 14 years.

Austria-Hungary, like most European nations throughout the 19th century, had a taste for empire.

They occupied large swaths of Europe and believed that they had firm rights over territories and people they ruled,

even though their subjects disagreed.

Revolutionary groups sprang up all across the empire in resistance to the rulers.

It was the assassination that

the never should have happened. No amount of planning in the world could have helped the revolutionary group the young Bosnians more than the luck they had that day.

After multiple blunders on both sides, it was Gavrillo Princip, standing on the wrong street

corner at the right time who managed to get the job done, firing two shots at point-blank

range. This was the modern day shot heard round the world. The assassination of the

air of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by a Serbian kicked off a chain of

reactions and alliances that would destroy the world as they knew it.

Admittedly, no one knew that at the time.

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