World War I

Between 1912 and 1913, the Balkan nations of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro fought two back-to-back wars that dramatically redrew the map of southeastern Europe. In the First Balkan War…

This is Ypres, a city in West Flanders, Belgium — sitting on the flat coastal plain of northwestern Europe, just inland from the English Channel that separates it from Britain. During the First World…

This moment unfolded near Ypres, in Belgium — a small, low-lying country squeezed between France to the south and west, Germany to the east, and the North Sea to the north, exactly the kind of flat…

This was Tannenberg, a village in what is now northeastern Poland — set on the low, lake-scattered plains that stretch between the Baltic coast to the north and the Masurian Lake District to the…

This is Sarajevo, the capital of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina — a city nestled in a mountain-ringed valley along the Miljacka River, deep in the Balkan Peninsula where Central Europe grades into the…

This is Meaux, France, a market town on the Marne River about 40 kilometers east of Paris — exactly the river crossing and rolling farmland the clue described. In September 1914, French and British…

This was the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey, jutting into the Aegean Sea at the point where the Dardanelles strait — the narrow waterway dividing Europe from Asia — connects to the Sea of Marmara. In…

This is Mecca, in present-day Saudi Arabia — a city nestled in the narrow Hejaz coastal corridor where the Red Sea's eastern shore meets the rugged Hejaz mountain range on the western edge of the…

This naval battle took place in the North Sea off the Jutland Peninsula, the finger of land that extends northward from continental Europe toward Norway and Sweden, separating the North Sea from the…

The battle unfolded around Albert, France, on the flat farmland of the upper Somme valley, roughly halfway between Paris and the narrow Strait of Dover facing England. Beginning 1 July 1916, British…

This was Verdun, a fortified city on the Meuse River in northeastern France — sitting in the rolling hills of the Western European interior, roughly midway between the Rhine to the east and the…

London, the capital of the United Kingdom, sits on the River Thames in southeast England — on the northwest edge of Europe, separated from France by the narrow English Channel. There, in May 1916, a…

Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, sits on the Atlantic seaboard of North America, roughly midway along the eastern coast between the Canadian border and the Gulf of Mexico — the…

Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, sits on the Potomac River along the eastern seaboard of North America, roughly midway up the Atlantic coast between the Gulf of Mexico and the…

This is Petrograd — now called Saint Petersburg — in Russia, sitting at the eastern tip of the Baltic Sea where the Neva River meets the Gulf of Finland, exactly where Europe's great northern plain…

The event took place in London, the capital of the United Kingdom, situated on the River Thames in southeastern England — on the large island off northwestern Europe's Atlantic coast, separated from…

Camp Funston sits in Kansas, deep in the interior of the United States — on the broad, flat Great Plains that stretch from the Gulf of Mexico northward toward Canada, far from any ocean coast. It was…

The location is the Forest of Compiègne, about 80 kilometres northeast of Paris in northern France — sitting in the broad, low basin drained by the Oise River, a tributary of the Seine, well inland…

The signing took place in Brest-Litovsk, a city now called Brest in modern Belarus, sitting on the flat lowland plain where the Bug River marks the boundary between Eastern and Central Europe…

Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, sits on the Potomac River along the Atlantic coastal plain, east of the Appalachian Mountains — exactly the eastern seaboard setting the clue…

This offensive launched from near Saint-Quentin, a town in northern France — sitting on the flat plains of Picardy, roughly midway between the English Channel coast and the Belgian border, west of…

On 11 November 1918, representatives of the Entente powers and Germany signed an armistice in a railroad car parked in the Compiègne Forest, near the town of Compiègne, France, bringing the fighting…

Paris, France — sitting on a wide bend of the Seine River in the heart of Western Europe, exactly where the flat North European Plain rolls toward the Atlantic coast — was where Allied leaders…

Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, sits on the eastern seaboard of North America, wedged between the Atlantic coastal plain and the Appalachian Mountains, roughly midway up the…

On 28 June 1919 — exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand — Germany and the Allied powers signed the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of…

This was Geneva, Switzerland — a city nestled at the southwestern corner of Lake Geneva, where the Alps rise to the south and the Jura range curves to the west, placing it at a crossroads of western…