Sarajevo II

During this January 1914 meeting, various possible Austro-Hungarian targets for assassination were discussed, including Franz Ferdinand. However, the participants decided only to dispatch Mehmed Mehmedbašić to Sarajevo, to kill the Governor of Bosnia, Oskar Potiorek.^[27]
While Mehmedbašić was travelling to Bosnia-Herzegovina from France, police searched his train for a thief. Thinking the police might be after him, he threw his weapons (a dagger and a bottle of poison) out the train window.^[27] Once he arrived in Bosnia-Herzegovina he had to set about looking for replacement weapons.

Franz Ferdinand chosen

The search for new weapons delayed Mehmedbašić's attempt on Potiorek. Before Mehmedbašić was ready to act, Ilić summoned him to Mostar. On 26 March 1914,^[28] Ilić informed Mehmedbašić that Belgrade had scrapped the mission to kill the governor. The plan now was to murder Franz Ferdinand, and Mehmedbašić should stand by for the new operation.^[29]
-copied from here.

Here is another way that the Sarajevo incident might have panned out differently. If police had not searched a train for a thief, then the prospective assassin would not have thrown away his weapons. Thus, he would not have delayed the proposed assassination of Potiorek. Thus, further, there might not have been time for the plan to change from murdering Potiorek to murdering Ferdinand.

This is a defining moment for the history of the twentieth century and thus for all subsequent history. What Manse Everard said about Palestine, 69-70 AD, might also apply to Sarajevo, 1914:

"'Patrol agents are concentrated on guarding Palestine [change to Sarajevo]. You can well imagine what emotions are engaged, through how many centuries. Fanatics or freebooters who want to change what took place in Jerusalem [Sarajevo], researchers crowding in and multiplying the chances of a fatal blunder, and the situation itself, the near-infinity of causes radiating into that episode and effects radiating out from it....I don't pretend to understand the physics, but I can sure believe what I have been taught, that the continuum is especially vulnerable around such moments. As far away as barbarian Germany, reality is unstable.'" (Time Patrol, p. 492)

What an ironic reference to "barbarian Germany"! We have been discussing events with causes and actions with motivations but the Patrol is able to understand such historical turning points in terms of physics.

(Both images show Sarajevo - the second, appropriately, with a sunset.)