The UK was home to 250,000 Belgian refugees during World War One, the largest single influx in the country's history. So why did they vanish with little trace?

Germany had invaded Belgium, forcing them to flee. The exodus had started in August and the refugees continued to arrive almost daily for months, landing at other ports as well, including Tilbury, Margate, Harwich, Dover, Hull and Grimsby.

"It was the largest influx of refugees in British history but it's a story that is almost totally ignored," says Tony Kushner, professor of modern history at the University of Southampton.

, after the sound of gunfire was silenced on Armistice Day, the deaths continued to mount. Revolutions spawned in Russia and Germany, arbitrary redrawing of national borders set the stage for decades of conflict, harsh reparation demands inspired the rise of Nazi Germany and the onset of World War I

. The first World War continues to kill to this day - just this past March, two Belgian construction workers were killed when they encountered an unexploded shell buried for a century. Bomb disposal units in France and Belgium dispose of tons of discovered shells every year.

the remnants remain -- scarred landscapes, thousands of memorials, artifacts preserved in museums, photographs, and the stories passed down through the years -- stories of such tremendous loss

World War I began a hundred years ago this summer, but for many of us it might as well be a thousand. We know it, if we know it at all, as a dimly remembered chapter in high school history, or as scenes from old black-and-white movies of soldiers hunkered in trenches doing battle with Germans in pointy helmets

Empires fell, and new nations--Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Poland among them-- were born in the ashes. Leaders of the still-powerful French and British empires used the conflict to redraw borders in ways that set the stage for future conflicts that stretch on today, in the Middle East, for example.

The weapons it introduced -- submarines, machine guns, poison gas, grenades, tanks -- are all still part of our arsenals. And it was World War I that made airpower and strategic bombing central to the success of any future war.

World War I slaughtered and mutilated soldiers on a scale the world had never seen. It's little wonder that its vast numbers of returning crippled veterans led to major gains in the technology of prosthetic limbs.

Virtually every device produced today to replace lost body function of soldiers returning from our modern wars -- as well as accident victims, or victims of criminal acts, such as the Boston Marathon bombings -- has its roots in the technological advances that emerged from World War I.

Thanks to better surgery, many now survived. On the German side alone, there were 2 million casualties, 64 percent of them with injured limbs. Some 67,000 were amputees. Over 4,000 amputations were performed on U.S. service personnel according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The years preceding World War I in Europe are generally referred to as the "Belle Epoque" -- a cultural and economic golden age. The period was hardly one of utter utopia for all citizens.

Modernism in art and literature had gathered momentum well before the First World War, which began in earnest 100 years ago this fall.

But with its eruption, those earlier Victorian forms no longer seemed adequate in the face of the period's upheavals, the destruction to bodies, to landscape, to culture itself. New experiments took up the task.

Belgium on Monday commemorated the heroism of British World War I nurse Edith Cavell a century after she was executed by the German forces that occupied the country.

Germany accused Cavell — the head of a nursing school in Brussels — of helping injured Britons escape, and shot her at dawn on October 12, 1915. Around much of the world she has largely been forgotten, but at the time the allied nations considered her a

Cavell was the head of a nursing school in Brussels when Germany invaded Belgium in 1914. She was sentenced in the very rooms of the Belgian senate where the commemoration took place and which the Germans had occupied during the war.

eglected for decades, underground caves in a small village in France's Somme valley contain a treasure trove of hundreds of engravings by World War One Canadian and British soldiers as they sought refuge from German assaults.

ar researchers say the engravings in the chalky rocks of Bouzincourt, which range from inscriptions of a soldier's name to crudely carved flags and hearts, offer a powerful insight into the thoughts of those caught up in the Somme Offensive, one of the bloodiest battles of the 20th century.

"They knew that they may be about to die. We all want to be known, we all want to feel like our lives matter. And so here on these walls we see them writing their last message to all of us, not knowing if anyone would ever see it," Jeffrey Gusky, a U.S. medic who for the past 20 years has gathered images for a photo project called "The Hidden World of WWI",

Bosnian Serbs unveiled a bronze statue Friday in Sarajevo of Gavrilo Princip, the nationalist who assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand a century ago and set in motion the First World War, which took 10 million lives and shattered empires

Princip was a 19-year-old radical whose assassination of the Austro-Hungarian royal in line for the Hapsburg throne is considered by most historians to have been an act of terrorism, although he is revered by Serb nationalists who credit him with freeing Bosnia and Serbia from respective occupation by the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires

Jovan Mojsilovic, the actor who played Princip in the theatrical presentation during the statue-unveiling ceremony, called the Vienna orchestra's visit to Sarajevo a "pure provocation," the Reuters news agency reported.

A World War I cannon was stolen from outside a Veterans of Foreign Wars building in Michigan, and an official is concerned it could be sold for scrap metal.

The vintage piece of military hardware was hauled away earlier this week from outside VFW Post 1137 in Benton Township in southwestern Michigan, The Herald-Palladium of St. Joseph reported (http://bit.ly/1NXqHgd ) Thursday.

The 12- to 14-foot-long cannon has a heavy metal barrel, wooden wheel spokes and sat on a concrete slab. It had been displayed since 1976 at the post. The non-working cannon doesn't have a firing pin.

erbia’s president has compared European Union demands of the country in exchange for membership of the bloc to an ultimatum the Austro-Hungarian empire presented to Belgrade on the eve of World War One.

Germany has dismissed the accusations as “unfounded” and Western diplomats say little is being asked of Serbia that it has not already signed up to under an EU-brokered accord with Kosovo in 2013 that is slowly being implemented.

Kosovo has been recognized by more than 100 countries, including the major Western powers, but not by Serbia or its big-power ally Russia.

Sir Edward Grey made an important statement in the House of Commons this afternoon [Sept. 28] on the Balkan situation. He declared, replying to Sir P. Magnus, that Great Britain had no hostility toward the Bulgarian people, but, on the contrary, entertained a feeling of warm sympathy toward their aspirations. If, however, the mobilization in Bulgaria was not for defensive purposes and if Bulgaria assumed an aggressive attitude on the side of the enemy, Great Britain was prepared to give its Balkan friends all the support in its power, in concert with Britain’s Allies.

Bill Keightley, a 20-year-old soldier from Melton, had gone over the top during the Battle of Loos but he lay severely wounded in a German trench for 36 hours after enemy machine-gunners had hit both of his legs.

His chances of surviving on a French battlefield which was to claim more than 50,000 British casualties were slight until a Gurkha soldier called Kulbir Thapa suddenly joined him in the trench.

“Apparently, the Germans stopped firing at this point and just applauded him.”Both men later met King George V as a result of the incident. Thapa attended Buckingham Palace to receive a Victoria Cross - the highest miliary honour - for his extraordinary deeds that day.

Israeli warplanes struck three training facilities in the Gaza Strip early Thursday after rockets were fired into Israel from the coastal enclave, witnesses and security officials said

Security officials said several missiles were fired at a training facility that belongs to Hamas' armed wing, the Izzidin al-Qassam Brigade, and to Islamic Jihad, another militant group.

The airstrikes on Gaza last week and Thursday were the most intense since the end of a 50-day Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip last summer.

Malek Layouni was not thinking about her Muslim faith, or her head scarf, as she took her excited 9-year-old son to an amusement site near Paris. But, as it turned out, it was all that mattered.

Mrs. Layouni still blushes with humiliation at being turned away in front of friends and neighbors, and at having no answer for her son, who kept asking her, “What did we do wrong?”

10 years after France passed its first anti-veil law restricting young girls from wearing veils in public schools, the head coverings of observant Muslim women, from colorful silk scarves to black chadors, have become one of the most potent flash points in the nation’s tense relations with its vibrant and growing Muslim population.

A new merging of strategic interests between Saudi Arabia and Israel was on display on Thursday as two former officials from those countries appeared on the same stage to discuss their concerns about Iran’s actions across the Middle East.

“We’re both allies of the United States,” Mr. Gold said after the presentation. “I hope this is the beginning of more discussion about our common strategic problems.”

Mr. Gold spoke of an Iranian “war of expansionism” stretching from Iraq to Syria to Yemen. Mr. Eshki talked about a list of goals, led by Arab-Israeli peace, but focused his remarks on Iranian actions since Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was in power more than 35 years ago

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN)ISIS has closed off a dam to the north of the Iraqi city of Ramadi -- seized by its forces last month -- cutting water supplies to pro-government towns downstream and making it easier for its fighters to attack forces loyal to Baghdad, local officials and residents said.

They added that the level of water in the Euphrates was now low enough that the river could be walked across, making it easier for ISIS militants to cross and attack the pro-government towns of Husaybah and Khalidiyah as well as the large security forces base at Habbaniya.

The 800 will be assigned to special combat missions against ISIS in Ramadi and other areas, a statement from the Iraqi Interior Ministry said.

Israel and key international supporters have sharply ratcheted up their campaign against the Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, with senior Israeli officials declaring it a strategic threat.

The moves came as the UK’s National Union of Students (NUS) voted on Tuesday to formally ally itself with the aims of BDS. Following the vote, Hebrew media reported that Israeli MPs were due to hold a special session in the Knesset to discuss the issue.

Israeli critics point to the call for a right to return and the opposition of some leaders of the movement to a two-state solution – which they describe as a mistake – as evidence that BDS is antisemitic.

A major battle has erupted on the western edge of the main separatist rebel stronghold in eastern Ukraine, leaving more than a dozen people dead and threatening to tip the country back into full-blown war.

Rebels in the city of Donetsk reported 15 dead on Wednesday, some civilians and some combatants, in territory under their control.

Yatsenyuk urged the leaders’ meeting at the G7 summit in Germany this weekend to condemn Russia. “The international community must come up with a correct and appropriate response to Russian aggression,” Yatsenyuk said.

prominent human rights group accused the Syrian government Wednesday of using toxic chemicals during a recent surge in attacks involving barrel bombs on rebel-held areas in northern Syria.

Assad’s government has been accused by Western countries of using chemical weapons over the course of the four-year conflict, including an attack involving sarin gas in 2013 that killed hundreds of people in a suburb of the capital.

Regime opponents and ­activists allege that Assad’s forces have punished residents in rebel-controlled areas with barrages of the crude bombs, which are built from oil barrels or gas cylinders and can be filled with toxic chemicals such as chlorine gas

Western women in the Islamic State are playing a crucial role in disseminating propaganda and are not simply flocking to the region to become “jihadi brides,” according to a new British research repor

The view that women are joining the Islamic State primarily to marry foreign fighters is “one-dimensional,” says the report,

Women are drawn to the Islamic State by a number of factors, including a sense of isolation, a feeling that the international Muslim community is under threat, and a promise of sisterhood, which was especially important for teenage girls, the report says.