Some key dates in the history of Bosnia-Herzegovina:
1908 – Ottoman province of Bosnia-Herzegovina annexed by Austria-Hungary.
1914 – A Bosnian Serb student, Gavrilo Princip, assassinates the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. This precipitates World War One.
1918 – Austria-Hungary collapses at the end of the war. Bosnia-Herzegovina becomes part of the future Yugoslavia.
1941 – Bosnia-Herzegovina annexed by pro-Hitler Croatian puppet state. Thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies are sent to the death camps.
1945 – Bosnia-Herzegovina liberated following campaign by Communist partisans.
1945-1991– Bosnia is part of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
1992 – Following collapse of communism, Croat and Muslim nationalists form tactical alliance and outvote Serbs at independence referendum.
1992-1995 – Bitter ethnically-rooted civil war involving Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, and Croats. Serbs quickly assume control of over half the republic. Killings and deportations are rampant in the newly-proclaimed Serb Republic, but also widespread in Muslim and Croat-controlled areas.