March, 1918. Russia signs the Treaty of Brest-Livosk with Germany and Austria-Hungary, leaving World War 1. Under the terms of the peace treaty, Germany and Turkey gain large regions of western and southern Russia.

March 31, 1918. The Germans launch a massive offensive on the Western Front, and the Allies retreat in confusion toward Paris.

June, 1918-1921. The Red Army of the Bolsheviks in Russia fight a civil war with the White Russians, a loosely organized group of anti-communists who are supported to some extent by the British and other Allied countries.

July 17, 1918. Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his family are murdered in their prison house in the Ural Mountains.

August 8, 1918. Twenty Allied divisions including British, Canadian, Australian, U.S. and French troops go on the attack near Amiens, France and push the Germans back five miles to the lines they occupied before German victory earlier in the spring.

September, 1918. Spanish influenza sweeps through Europe killing millions and crippling the war effort on both sides. Between 50 and 100 million people will die from the influenza between 1918 and 1920 as it travels across the world, making it possibly the most deadly epidemic in history. The flu epidemic kills far more people, soldiers and civilians, than the war, in spite of the horrible casualty rate of World War I.

October 1, 1918. Arab forces led by Prince Feisal and advised by British Major T.E. Lawrence capture the Syrian city of Damascus from the Turkish Ottomans. Most of the Arab Middle East, including Palestine and the city of Jerusalem, is now free of Turkish rule.

October, 1918. The Austro-Hungarian Empire begins to break up as Czechoslovakia declares its independence.

November 11, 1918. At 11 a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year 1918 the armistice between the Allies—France, Britain, the United States, and Italy–and the German Empire takes effect. It is estimated that more than ten million people have died in the war, more than in other war in the history of mankind.

December, 1918. The world’s first three-color traffic lights are introduced in New York CIty.

On the night of July 16, 1918, the Romanov royal family was awakened around 2:00 am, told to dress, and led down into a half-basement room at the back of the house where they were imprisoned. There they were executed by Bolshevik soldiers who feared that the family would soon be rescued by monarchists with the White Russian army.

Many have wondered for a long time what happened to Princess Anastasia and her brother Prince Alexei, children of Czar Nicholas II of Russia who was murdered along with his wife and at least three of their five children on July 17, 1918. Nicholas and Alexandra: An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia is an excellent 1967 biography of the last royal family of Russia by historian Robert K. Massie, but it doesn’t deal with the mystery of the disappearance of two of the Czar’s children, possibly Anastasia and Alexei. From time to time impostors have shown up claiming to be Princess Anastasia or Prince Alexei. The bodies of the royal family were exhumed in 1998, and it was then that it was discovered that two of the children’s bodies were indeed missing.

However two more bodies were discovered in 2007. DNA tests proved that these were the bodies of Prince Alexei and Princess Maria. If you’d like to read more about the Romanovs (wrapped in a fictional speculation), check out these books.

Children’s Books:
Anastasia’s Album by Hugh Brewster. Reviewed at The Book Nosher.

Young Adult Fiction:
The Lost Crown by Sarah Miller. Reviewed at The Fourth Musketeer.
Anastasia’s Secret by Susanne Dunlop. Bloomsbury, 2010. Reviewed at The Fourth Musketeer.
Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess by Carolyn Meyer. (Royal Diaries series) Scholastic, 2000.
The Curse of the Romanovs by Staton Rabin Margaret K. McElderry, 2007. This one’s mostly about Alexei, the Romanov brother,and about Rasputin, and it combines science fiction, horror, and teen historical fiction into a rather odd adventure story. Reviewed at Book Dweeb.
Dreaming Anastasia by Joy Preble. Reviewed at Whimpulsive.

Adult Fiction:
The Tsarina’s Daughter by Carolly Erickson. Reviewed at S. Krishna’s Books.
The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander. The kitchen servant boy tells the story of the downfall of the Romanov family from his point of view.
The Romanov Bride by Robert Alexander. A novel about the Russian Revolution and Grand Duchess Elisavayeta Feodorovna Romanov, wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia. Reviewed at Life and Times of a New Yorker.
Oksana by Susan May Warren and Susan K. Downs. Reviewed at The Friendly Book Nook.