Fascinating people, fascinating places.

G'da and welcome to the Dan Mainwearing podcast.

This is where we talk to and about the famous and the infamous,

the celebrated and the obscure, the well-known and the undiscovered,

interviews, articles and discussions from around the globe. You're going to. On the young Serb, on the 28th of June, 1914,

the young Serb named Gravilo Princip, sat outside a delicatessen in Sarajevo, reflecting on his

role in a botched assassination attempt on Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

To his surprise, the intended target suddenly came back into view.

This time, there would be no mistake. He calmly approached the car and fired two shots.

One at Ferdinand, the other and his wife Sophie, each proved fatal.

His violent crime, which led directly to the outbreak of World War I.

Wasn't the act of a lone wolf gunman. It was just the latest and most devastating

in a series of terrorist acts performed by members of the Serbian Black Hand.

In this episode I explore the shadowy group's origins, their activities, and how their ultimate dream was realized

in 1918, though few of them were alive to see it. To understand the black hand you have to look back at the history of the Serbian people.

The ancestors of the Serbs were Slavic tribes who made their way into the Balkans during the 5th and 6th centuries to

AD. It was a rough neighborhood having long been fought over by groups including Greeks,

darshans, Goths and Romans.

Sitting on the frontier of Europe and Asia,

the area soon attracted more

more orders from places such as Hungary and Turkey.

But while the Serbs evolved a distinct culture, from places such as Hungary and Turkey.

...