George V's reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism, Irish republicanism, and the Indian independence movement, all of which radically changed the political landscape. The Parliament Act 1911 established the supremacy of the elected British House of Commons over the unelected House of Lords. As a result of the First World War (1914–1918), the empires of his first cousins Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany fell, while the British Empire expanded to its greatest effective extent.

In 1917, George became the first monarch of the House of Windsor, which he renamed from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as a result of anti-German public sentiment. In 1924 he appointed the first Labour ministry and in 1931 the Statute of Westminster recognised the dominions of the Empire as separate, independent states within the Commonwealth of Nations.

Sir Robert Laird Borden, (June 26, 1854 – June 10, 1937) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the eighth prime minister of Canada, in office from 1911 to 1920. He is best known for his leadership of Canada during World War I. Borden was born in Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia.

He was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1896, representing the Conservative Party. He replaced Charles Tupper as party leader in 1901, and became prime minister after the party's victory at the 1911 federal election. As prime minister, Borden led Canada through World War I and its immediate aftermath. For the 1917 federal election (the first in six years), Borden created the Unionist Party, an amalgam of Conservatives and pro-conscription Liberals; his government was re-elected with an overwhelming majority.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was an American statesman and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921.

A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and as governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913, before winning the 1912 presidential election. As president, he oversaw the passage of progressive legislative policies unparalleled until the New Deal in 1933. He also led the United States during World War I, establishing an activist foreign policy known as "Wilsonianism." He was one of the three key leaders at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where he championed a new League of Nations, but he was unable to win Senate approval for US participation in the League.

World War I (often abbreviated as WWI or WW1), also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It was also one of the deadliest conflicts in history; an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilians died as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide.

David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician. He was the final Liberal to serve as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

As Chancellor of the Exchequer (1908–1915) during H. H. Asquith's tenure as Prime Minister, Lloyd George was a key figure in the introduction of many reforms which laid the foundations of the modern welfare state. His most important role came as the highly energetic Prime Minister of the Wartime Coalition Government (1916–22), during and immediately after the First World War. He was a major player at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 that reordered Europe after the defeat of the Central Powers.

The Zimmermann Telegram (or Zimmermann Note or Zimmerman Cable) was a secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico. In the event that the United States entered World War I against Germany, Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. The telegram was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. Revelation of the contents enraged Americans, especially after German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann publicly admitted the telegram was genuine on March 3, and helped generate support for the United States declaration of war on Germany in April. The decryption was described as the most significant intelligence triumph for Britain during World War I, and one of the earliest occasions on which a piece of signal intelligence influenced world events.

At Halifax, the French munitions ship Mont Blanc collided with the Belgian relief ship Imo. The resulting explosion, the largest before the advent of the atomic bomb, killed more than 1,600 people and injured 9,000 in Canada's worst disaster.

Text and image © The Canadian Encyclopedia

As WWI moved to its end the world was swept with a pandemic of epic proportions, killing more people than the fighting. It was called Spanish Flu because it only became widely reported when it reached neutral Spain, press censorship having suppressed news of it elsewhere. One theory is that it was brought to Europe by US Troops. patient zero having been traced to a military training camp in the United States