10 ways World War I changed the world 100 years ago

For the Americans, this ended at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day with a ceremonial shot of the Battery E doughboys, the eleventh field artillery.

"The men were too exhausted to cheer them on," writes Kevin Hymel for ArmyHistory.org, but they were relieved to have survived some of the toughest battles in US military history. The First World War, then known as the Great War, was a war like no other, for both Allied and Axis powers, trapped in muddy trenches for four long years – its carnage , first example of the absurdity of war.

Technological progress – submachine guns and toxic gases – mutilated and killed in unprecedented numbers. The fields of the farm were forever converted into cemeteries. Some soils remain too toxic to be used a hundred years later.

Despite the horrendous number of deaths – 9.7 million armed and 10 million civilians – this would not be a war to end all wars. Instead, it seemed to set in motion a number of events that, like mortal dominoes, would alter the course of history.

On this 1918 photo from the Heath National Museum, flu victims gather at an emergency hospital in Camp Funston, a subdivision of Fort Riley, Kansas. Growing fears of an avian influenza pandemic are forcing the US authorities to face the problems of the country's troubled flu vaccine industry. President Bush met on Friday, October 7, 2005 with heads of six vaccine manufacturing companies and federal health officials, urging them to increase production to counter the threat of bird flu. (AP Photo / National Museum of Health, File)

In 1918, "World War I and the flu collaborated," according to public health reports. "The war has promoted disease by creating conditions in the trenches of France that, according to some epidemiologists, have allowed the influenza virus to become a world-class killer. and the soldiers are bringing the virus home to them all over the world. According to the estimates of the centers of control and prevention of diseases, 500 million people would be infected during the pandemic of 1918-1919. It's a staggering third of the world's population. Although the death toll is attributable to the war itself, the flu kills an estimated 50 million people, including 675,000 Americans. This remains the worst pandemic in recent history.

In this archival photo, the latest photo of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the second on the left, Tsarina Alexandra, in the center of the stage, and their families are shown in this undated photo. Bottom row, from left to right, Princess Olga, Tsar Nicholas II, Princess Anastasia, Prince Alexei and Princess Tatiana. Top row, from left to right, Princess Maria and Princess Alexandra. A panel of the Russian Orthodox Church investigating the murder in 1918 of the last Russian tsar and his family said that he was investigating the question of whether he was there. was a ritual murder – a statement that angered Jewish groups. (AP photo, file)