July 28, 2014

World War I centenary

Centenary of Austria-Hungary's declaration of war on Serbia

At exactly 12:30 p.m. — the reported moment Pašić received the war telegram a century earlier — Serbia's parliament opened an exhibition displaying the telegram itself.

28 July 2014: an exhibition timed to a telegram

On 28 July 2014, exactly 100 years after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Serbia's National Assembly opened the exhibition “July 1914—in Documents” in Belgrade. Assembly speaker Maja Gojković and Archive of Serbia director Miroslav Perišić opened it at 12:30 p.m., matching the reported time at which Serbian prime minister Nikola Pašić received the 1914 declaration-of-war telegram.

What went on display was paperwork rather than battlefield relics: archival documents from July 1914, including the declaration of war and shorthand records from the Serbian Assembly's wartime extraordinary session in Niš.

A quieter anniversary in Austria

In Austria, government leaders issued commemorative statements on the anniversary. The scholarly history of Austria's centenary program reports that no major official event accompanied them that day.

The centenary calendar was spread across separate observances in any case: the Sarajevo assassination centenary fell on 28 June, and the major European commemorations came in early August.

An anniversary, not a war

By the afternoon, Serbia's parliament had opened a public documentary exhibition. The date produced acts of remembrance and political statements, not a new military or diplomatic change.

The listed date belongs to the observance rather than to the events observed; Austria-Hungary's declaration of war is a separate 1914 event with its own date.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 3 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The listed date is the 2014 anniversary, not the underlying declaration of war, which occurred on 1914-07-28. A separate article about the original event should use the 1914 date.
The Serbian parliament page appears to contain a typographical error when it dates the historical Niš extraordinary session to “27–31 July 2014”; the displayed records concern the 1914 session.