0:00 On June 28, 1914, a nineteen-year-old named Gavrilo Princip took a bite of a sandwich in Sarajevo, stepped out of a delicatessen, and found the history of the twentieth century walking right towards him.0:15 It's an unbelievable, world-altering moment, and as we've been exploring all this month—from the day cash came to the wall on June 27th to right now—some days just carry more weight than others.0:30 June 28th, though… June 28th is a heavyweight.0:34 It’s a day of sparks and explosions, a day that draws a line in the sand.0:40 Let’s go back to that sandwich.0:42 It’s probably not true, the sandwich part, but it’s a story we tell because the reality is almost too absurd to believe on its own.0:52 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is visiting Sarajevo.0:59 It’s a tense visit.1:01 Serbian nationalism is boiling over, and a group of young men, including our friend Gavrilo Princip, have a plan.1:09 A terrible one.1:11 Their group, the Black Hand, has stationed assassins all along the Archduke’s parade route.1:18 The first conspirator gets nervous and does nothing.1:22 The second one throws a bomb… but it bounces off the Archduke’s car and explodes under the car behind it, injuring about twenty people.1:32 The Archduke is furious, but unharmed.1:35 The motorcade speeds away.1:37 The assassination has FAILED.1:39 This is where history should have moved on.1:43 A minor footnote, a failed attempt.1:46 But the Archduke, bless his heart, decides he wants to visit the wounded from the bombing in the hospital.1:54 A noble gesture.1:55 The problem is, nobody tells his driver that the route has changed.2:00 So the driver takes the original planned route… which includes a right turn onto Franz Josef Street.2:08 An official in the car shouts, “What is this?2:12 This is the wrong way!2:13 We’re supposed to go straight!” The driver slams on the brakes.2:18 The car stalls.2:19 Right in front of Schiller’s delicatessen.2:23 And who should be standing right there, having just given up on the whole failed assassination plot?2:30 Gavrilo Princip.2:32 He can’t believe his luck.2:34 The car is stopped.2:35 The Archduke is five feet away.2:38 Princip steps forward, raises his pistol, and fires two shots.2:42 One for the Archduke, one for his wife, Sophie.2:46 Both are fatal.2:47 And with that… the world ends.2:50 Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.2:53 Russia mobilizes to protect Serbia.2:55 Germany, allied with Austria-Hungary, declares war on Russia and France.3:01 Britain declares war on Germany.3:03 A series of interlocking alliances, a house of cards built on decades of imperial tension, all comes tumbling down because of a wrong turn and a stalled car.3:16 Thirty-seven million casualties.3:18 The end of four empires.3:20 The redrawing of the world map.3:22 All because of that one moment on June 28th.3:26 And here is where it gets TRULY incredible.3:29 The thing that makes a historian just sit back and stare at the calendar.3:35 The war that started on that day, World War One, the Great War… it officially ended with a peace treaty.3:43 The Treaty of Versailles.3:45 And the date that treaty was signed?3:48 June 28th, 1919.3:49 Five.3:49 Years.3:50 To.3:50 The.3:50 DAY.3:51 You can’t make this stuff up!3:53 It’s history rhyming.3:55 It’s the universe trying to tell us something.3:58 They held the signing ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, the very same place where the German Empire had been proclaimed decades earlier.4:10 It was meant to be a moment of ultimate victory for the Allies and ultimate humiliation for Germany.4:18 And it was.4:18 The terms were brutal.4:20 Crippling reparations, loss of territory, the infamous "War Guilt Clause" that forced Germany to accept ALL the blame.4:29 Looking back, we see it so clearly.4:32 We know that the men signing that treaty weren’t ending a war; they were writing the prologue to the next one.4:41 A young John Maynard Keynes, a British delegate, walked out of the conference in protest, saying the terms would destroy the German economy and breed resentment that would lead to another war.4:56 He was right.4:57 A young, angry German army corporal heard the news of the treaty and fumed, vowing revenge.5:04 His name was Adolf Hitler.5:06 So on this one day, June 28th, you have the spark that ignites the fire, and exactly five years later, the document that pours gasoline all over the embers.5:18 It’s a perfect, tragic loop.5:20 But June 28th isn’t just about world wars and treaties signed by men in suits.5:26 Fifty years after the assassination, to the day, another spark, another explosion.5:32 This time, not in Sarajevo, but in Greenwich Village, New York City.5:38 The year is 1969.5:39 At one-twenty in the morning on June 28th, the New York City police raid a bar called the Stonewall Inn.5:47 This was routine.5:49 The Stonewall was a gay bar, and in 1969, being gay was treated as a crime.5:54 Raids were a constant form of harassment, a way to intimidate and brutalize a community that was forced to live in the shadows.6:04 The lights would flash, the police would line everyone up, check IDs, and arrest people for… well, for anything.6:13 For not wearing "gender-appropriate" clothing.6:17 For dancing with someone of the same sex.6:20 For simply existing.6:21 Usually, the patrons would scatter.6:24 They would comply.6:25 They would be humiliated and go home.6:28 But not this night.6:30 Not on June 28th.6:31 Something was different.6:33 Maybe it was the heat of the summer.6:36 Maybe it was the death of Judy Garland, a gay icon, just a few days earlier.6:42 Or maybe people were just… done.6:44 As the police started making arrests, dragging people out into the street, the crowd outside didn’t disperse.6:53 It grew.6:53 And it got angry.6:55 People started yelling.6:56 Then they started throwing things.6:59 Pennies, then bottles, then bricks from a nearby construction site.7:04 The police, shocked by the resistance, retreated and barricaded themselves inside the bar they had just raided.7:13 Think about that reversal.7:15 The oppressors, trapped inside, with the people they had come to oppress now laying siege to them.7:23 It was a revolution in miniature.7:25 The riots and protests went on for six nights.7:29 It was messy, it was violent, and it was GLORIOUS.7:33 That night at the Stonewall Inn is the dividing line.7:37 Before Stonewall, the fight for gay rights was mostly quiet, pursued by small groups of activists.7:44 After Stonewall, it was a mass movement.7:48 It was loud.7:48 It was proud.7:49 The first Pride marches were held a year later to commemorate the Stonewall Uprising.7:56 The entire modern LGBTQ+ rights movement can trace its roots back to that brick, that bottle, that moment when a group of marginalized people decided they would not be invisible anymore.8:11 So you have these two incredible events on the same day.8:15 One, an assassination that plunged the world into a war between nations.8:21 The other, a police raid that sparked a war for personal freedom and dignity.8:27 Both started with a small, almost accidental act that spiraled into something world-changing.8:34 So where does that leave us?8:36 A day of assassination, war, failed peace, and revolution.8:40 It’s… a lot.8:41 It’s heavy.8:42 But June 28th also gave us a birthday.8:45 And it’s the perfect one.8:47 On June 28th, 1926, a man named Melvin Kaminsky was born in Brooklyn, New York.8:53 You know him as Mel Brooks.8:55 Yes, THAT Mel Brooks.8:57 The two-thousand-year-old man.8:59 The director of Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and The Producers.9:05 And his life, his entire career, feels like the perfect human response to the madness of June 28th.9:13 Think about it.9:14 Mel Brooks is born into the world that the Treaty of Versailles created.9:19 He comes of age during the Great Depression and then goes off to fight in World War Two—the very war that Keynes predicted and Hitler promised.9:31 And what was his job in the army?9:33 He was a combat engineer.9:35 His specialty?9:36 Defusing land mines!9:38 He literally spent his young adulthood cleaning up the deadly, explosive messes left behind by others.9:46 And when he comes home from that horror, what does he do?9:50 He dedicates his entire life to making people laugh at the very things that should be terrifying.9:58 His most famous, most controversial work, The Producers, is about two guys trying to get rich by putting on a Broadway musical about Adolf Hitler called "Springtime for Hitler." It’s outrageous.10:13 It’s shocking.10:14 And it’s his core philosophy in action.10:17 He once said, “If you can reduce Hitler to something laughable, you win.” He took the single most monstrous figure of the twentieth century, a direct product of the historical forces of June 28th, and he turned him into a punchline.10:35 He used comedy to rob the monster of its power.10:39 He didn’t ignore the horror; he stared it right in the face and ridiculed it until it seemed small and absurd.10:47 And isn't that just the perfect counterpoint?10:51 On a day that gave us a war started by accident, a peace treaty that guaranteed another war, and a riot that started a revolution… it also gave us a man who taught us how to laugh at the tyrants.11:06 He showed us that one of the most powerful weapons we have against darkness is to refuse to take it seriously on its own terms.11:16 Looking back, we can see the threads connecting these things.11:21 The arrogance of empire that led Franz Ferdinand to Sarajevo.11:25 The arrogance of the victors at Versailles.11:29 The arrogance of the police raiding the Stonewall Inn.11:33 And in the face of all that heavy, self-important arrogance, the life of Mel Brooks is a giant, joyful act of defiance.11:42 It’s the ultimate rebellion.11:44 So when we look back at this day, June 28th, we don’t just see the turning points—the gunshots and the treaties and the bricks thrown in the night.11:56 We also see the human response.11:58 The desperate need to find a way to live in the world that those turning points create.12:05 Sometimes that response is to fight.12:08 Sometimes it’s to sign a piece of paper.12:11 And sometimes, it’s to write a really, really good joke.12:15 History isn't a story of what was bound to happen; it's the record of every time someone decided it wasn't.
