When commemorating our troops, doctors and nurses this Anzac Day, consider also tipping your hat to the discovery of bacteriophages. In the post-antibiotic era, our health might just depend on them.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been a central figure in linking the Gallipoli campaign with Islamic conceptualisations of the Turkish nation.
EPA
Jonathan Ebel, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Writings at the time of WWI aimed to construct a religiously diverse and conflicted America into a virtuous, Christian nation. This narrative continued in the cemeteries for the war heroes.
President Woodrow Wilson addressing a joint session of Congress on April 2, 1917, urging a declaration that a state of war exists.
AP Photo
Gordon Stables, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
Wilson coined the phrase ‘America First’ and appealed for ‘peace without victory.’ But on April 2, 1917 he asked Congress for a declaration of war. The impact on American foreign policy was profound.
The Navy converted to oil from coal a few years before the U.S. entered World War I, helping to solidify petroleum’s strategic status.
Naval History and Heritage Command
Before World War I, petroleum had few practical uses, but it emerged from the war as a strategic global asset necessary for national stability and security.
Some soldiers’ wounds in WWI were more mental than physical.
George Metcalf Archival Collection
Mental health trauma has always been a part of war. Treatments have come a long way over the last century, but we still don’t understand why the responses change for different people and times.
Peace Delegates on the Noordam – Mrs. P. Lawrence, Jane Addams, Anna Molloy.
Library of Congress
The U.S. saw an increase in anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant sentiments in the period between World War I and World War II. Here’s why it matters to know that history today.
Modern high school students are learning two very different approaches to World War I.
Africa Studio / Shutterstock.com
High school students in America learn two very different perspectives on World War I in their U.S. and world history classes. But which of these competing viewpoints should take center stage?
American troops drive French Renault FT tanks to the battle line in the Forest of Argonne, France, September 26, 1918.
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
America’s longstanding tradition of isolationism meant that in 1917 U.S. forces needed a lot of support from overseas allies to fight effectively.
Aaron Douglas. "Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction." Oil on canvas, 1934. The New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division.
Many associate post-World War I culture with Hemingway and Fitzgerald’s Lost Generation. But for black artists, writers and thinkers, the war changed the way they saw their past and their future.
Forty six thousand Australians died on the Western Front. After WWI, diggers were resettled in Queensland’s Granite Belt, where suburbs were named after battle sites. Our photo essay explores these poignant places today.
The internet offers a chance to personalise our commemoration by choosing when, where and how we take part.
Stefan Wermuth/Reuters
The internet and social media are changing how we commemorate war. The hashtag #LestWeForget will be shared millions of times on Remembrance Day in tweets and Facebook comments.