Twitter Account Aims to Recreate World War I With 'Live Updates'

World War One began 100 years ago on 28 June, 1914, with the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which was followed by a series of violent events that would steadily escalate, leading into one of the most violent wars, and one of the greatest losses of human life, in history.

The war raged on for over four years, ending in 1918. In this time, the war took place in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, and off the coast of South and North America, and four years, three months and one week after it began, the war ended with an Allied victory, that brought about the end of the Russian, German, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, and in many ways, went on to set the stage for World War Two.

To try and help people to understand, 100 years later, what it was like to live in that period of history, a Twitter handle, @realtimeWW1 has been tweeting regular updates to relive the war, 140 characters at a time. Inspired by the @RealtimeWWII handle, first year students of Masters in European Contemporary History of the University of Luxembourg have, as a part of their Digital Humanities class, created the @realtimeWWI handle, and will continue to work on the project until 2018.

The tweets are all based on historically sourced documents, which are linked to in the tweets, so the feed doesn't just give you accounts of the war, but actually makes it possible to study the original sources for any tweet that catches your attention, which you might want to study further as well.

As noted on the "About" page of the project:

World War I is one of the oldest periods we can reconstruct with the support and background of modern media as photographs and films. There are even some, though fewer and fewer, time witnesses left. This range of sources offers the opportunity to have an insight into more than a history of winners and losers. It opens the way to an understanding of the meaning of war for the most different people.

If you are at all interested in history, then following this handle is a great idea.