[Lee Stewart]

National World War I Museum and Memorial | Missouri

In 1914, the assassination of an obscure Austrian royal set the spark that ignited the first global war in human history, and one of the deadliest. The National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City dates to the days immediately after the war's end, when patriotic city leaders raised the equivalent of $34 million in today's dollars in just 10 days. Two years later, in 1921, Allied commanders dedicated the memorial in front of 100,000 people — the first meeting of all five leaders.