January
January 1 – The British Royal Army Medical Corps first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled.
January 9 – Battle of Gallipoli: Last British troops evacuated from Gallipoli, as the Ottoman Empire prevails over a joint British and French operation to capture Istanbul.
January 13 – WWI: The Battle of Wadi occurs between Allied British and Ottoman Empire forces, during the Mesopotamian campaign in modern-day Iraq.
January 24
In Browning, Montana, the temperature drops from +6.7°C to -48.8°C (44°F to -56°F) in one day, the greatest change ever on record for a 24-hour period.
Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad: The Supreme Court of the United States upholds the national income tax.
January 29 – WWI: Paris is bombed by German zeppelins for the first time.
January 31 – WWI: an attack was planned on Verdun
February
February 3 – Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Canada are burned down.
February 9 – 6.00 p.m. – Tristan Tzara "founds" the art movement Dadaism (according to Hans Arp).
February 11
Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control in the United States.
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presents its first concert.
The Romanian football club Sportul Studenţesc is founded.
February 21 – WWI: The Battle of Verdun begins in France.
March
March 7 – In Munich German automobile company BMW (Die Bayerischen Motoren Werke) is founded
March 8–9 – Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa leads about 500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico, killing 12 U.S. soldiers. A garrison of the U.S. 13th Cavalry Regiment fights back and drives them away.
March 15 – States President Woodrow Wilson sends 12,000 United States troops over the U.S.–Mexico border to pursue Pancho Villa; the 13th Cavalry regiment enters Mexican territory.
March 16 – Mexican Revolution: The U.S. 7th and 10th Cavalry regiments under John J. Pershing cross the border to join the hunt for Villa.
March 22
The last Emperor of China, Yuan Shikai, abdicates the throne and the Republic of China (1912–49) is restored.
J. R. R. Tolkien marries Edith Bratt in England (they would serve as the inspiration for the fictional characters Lúthien and Beren).
March 24 – The French ferry SS Sussex is torpedoed by SM UB-29 in the English Channel with at least 50 killed (including the composer Enrique Granados), resulting on May 4 in the Sussex pledge by Germany to the United States suspending its intensified submarine warfare policy.[1]
April
The Proclamation of the Irish Republic which was distributed during the Easter Rising.
April – The light switch is invented by William J. Newton and Morris Goldberg.
April 11 – WWI – Egyptian Expeditionary Force begins occupation of the Sinai Peninsula
April 20 – The Chicago Cubs play their first game at Weeghman Park (modern-day Wrigley Field), defeating the Cincinnati Reds 7–6 in 11 innings.
April 22 – The Chinese steamer ship Hsin-Yu capsizes off the Chinese coast; at least 1,000 are killed.
April 24–30 – The Easter Rising occurs in Ireland. Members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood proclaim an Irish Republic and the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army occupy the General Post Office and other buildings in Dublin before surrendering to the British Army.
April 24–May 10 – Voyage of the James Caird: an open boat journey from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands to South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean (800 nautical miles (1,500 km; 920 mi)) undertaken by Sir Ernest Shackleton and five companions to obtain rescue for the main body of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition following the loss of its ship Endurance.
April 27 – WWI – Gas attack at Hulluch in France: The 47th Brigade, 16th (Irish) Division is decimated in one of the most heavily concentrated German gas attacks of the war.
April 29 – WWI – Siege of Kut ends with the surrender of British forces to the Ottoman Empire at Kut-al-Amara on the Tigris in Basra Vilayet during the Mesopotamian campaign.
May
May 11 – Max Reger, German Composer, died in Leipzig, Germany.
May 15 – Jesse Washington, a black farmhand, is brutally lynched in Robinson, Texas by a crowd of white people, for murdering his employers' wife. It is disputed whether Jesse really committed the crime, or was just being used as a scapegoat.
May 16
United States Marines invade the Dominican Republic.
Britain and France conclude the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement, which is to divide Arab areas of the Ottoman Empire, following the conclusion of WWI, into French and British spheres of influence.
May 20 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting (Boy with Baby Carriage).
May 21 – Britain initiates daylight saving time.
May 22 – The case of United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola is decided.
May 31–June 1 – WWI – Battle of Jutland between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet[2] in the North Sea, the war's only large-scale clash of battleships. The result is tactically inconclusive but British dominance of the North Sea is maintained
June
June – Arab Revolt begins
June 4 – WWI – The Brusilov Offensive, the height of Russian operations in the war, begins with their breaking through Austro-Hungarian lines.
June 5
Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
The HMS Hampshire sinks having hit a mine off the Orkney Islands, Scotland, with Lord Kitchener aboard.
June 15 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America.[3]
July
July 1–November 18 – WWI – Battle of the Somme, opening with the Battle of Albert: More than one million soldiers die; with 57,470 British Empire casualties on the first day, 19,240 of them killed, the British Army's bloodiest day.[4] The immediate result is tactically inconclusive.
July 1–12 – At least one shark attacks 5 swimmers along 80 miles (130 km) of New Jersey coastline during the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, resulting in 4 deaths and the survival of one youth who requires limb amputation. This event is the inspiration for author Peter Benchley, over half a century later, to write Jaws.
July 2 – Battle of Erzincan: Russian forces defeat troops of the Ottoman Empire in Armenia.
July 15 – In Seattle, William Boeing incorporates Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing).
July 15–19 – During the Battle of Delville Wood 766 men from the South African Brigade are killed in South Africa's biggest loss during World War I.
July 19–20 – WWI – Battle of Fromelles: An attack by Australian and British troops is repulsed by the German army with heavy casualties.
July 22 – In San Francisco, a bomb explodes on Market Street during a Preparedness Day parade, killing 10 injuring 40 (Warren Billings and Tom Mooney are later wrongly convicted of it).
July 29 – In Ontario, Canada, a lightning strike ignites a forest fire that destroys the towns of Cochrane and Matheson, killing 233.
July 30 – German agents cause the Black Tom explosion in Jersey City, New Jersey, an act of sabotage destroying an ammunition depot and killing at least 7 people.
August
August 3–5 – WWI (Sinai and Palestine Campaign): Battle of Romani: British Imperial troops secure victory over a joint Ottoman-German force.
August 7 – WWI: Portugal joins the Allies.
August 9 – Lassen Volcanic National Park is established in California.
August 21 – Peru declares neutrality.
August 25 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs legislation creating the National Park Service.
August 27 – WWI: The Kingdom of Romania declares war on the Central Powers, entering the war on the side of the Allies.
August 28 – WWI:
Germany declares war on Romania.
Italy declares war on Germany.
August 29
The United States passes the Philippine Autonomy Act.
The Chinese steamer Hsin-Yu capsizes off the Chinese coast; at least 1,000 are killed.
September
September 1 – Bulgaria declares war on Romania, going on to take Dobruja.
September 2 – British pilot Leefe Robinson becomes the first to shoot down a German airship over Britain.
September 5 – Release of D. W. Griffith's film Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages in the United States.
September 11 – A mechanical failure causes the central span of the Quebec Bridge, a cantilever-type structure, to crash into the Saint Lawrence River for the second time, killing 13 workers.
September 13 – Mary, a circus elephant, is hanged in the town of Erwin, Tennessee for killing her handler, Walter "Red" Eldridge.
September 15–22 – WWI – Battle of Flers–Courcelette in France: British advance. The battle is significant for the first use of the tank in warfare; also for the debut of the Canadian and New Zealand Divisions in the Battle of the Somme.
September 27 – Iyasu V of Ethiopia is deposed in a palace coup, in favour of his aunt Zewditu.
October
Troops from New Zealand during WWI.
October 12 – Hipólito Yrigoyen is elected President of Argentina.
October 14 – Perm State University is founded in Russia.
October 16 – Margaret Sanger opens the first U.S. birth control clinic - a forerunner of Planned Parenthood.
October 21 – Friedrich Adler shoots Karl von Stürgkh, Prime Minister of Austria.
October 27 – Battle of Segale: Negus Mikael of Wollo, marching on the Ethiopian capital in support of his son Emperor Iyasu, is defeated by Fitawrari Habte Giyorgis, securing the throne for Empress Zauditu.
November
November 1
Pavel Milyukov delivers his "stupidity or treason" speech in the Russian State Duma, precipitating the downfall of the Boris Stürmer government.
The first 40-hour work week officially begins in the Endicott-Johnson factories of Western New York.
November 5
The Kingdom of Poland is proclaimed by a joint act of the emperors of Germany and Austria.
Honan Chapel, Cork, Ireland, a product of the Irish Arts and Crafts movement (1894–1925), is dedicated.
November 7
U.S. presidential election, 1916: Democratic President Woodrow Wilson narrowly defeats Republican Charles E. Hughes.
Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the United States House of Representatives.
November 13 – Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes is expelled from the Labor Party over his support for conscription.
November 18 – WWI – Battle of the Somme: In France, British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle, which started on July 1.
November 21 – WWI – Hospital ship HMHS Britannic, designed as the third Olympic-class ocean liner for White Star Line, sinks in the Kea Channel of the Aegean Sea after hitting a mine. 30 lives are lost. At 48,158 gross register tons, she is the largest ship lost during the war.
November 22 – Writer Jack London dies of kidney failure at his California home aged 40.
November 23 – WWI – Eastern Front: Bucharest, the capital of Romania, is occupied by troops of the Central Powers.
December
December 12 – In the Dolomites, 100 avalanches bury 18,000 Austrian and Italian soldiers.
December 18 – WWI: The Battle of Verdun ends in France with German troops defeated.
December 21 – WWI: El Arish occupied by the British Empire Desert Column during advance across the Sinai Peninsula.
December 22 – The British Sopwith Camel aircraft makes its maiden flight. It is designed to counter the German's Fokker aircraft.
December 23 – WWI: The Desert Column captures the Ottoman garrison during the Battle of Magdhaba.
December 30
Humberto Gómez and his mercenaries seize Arauca in Colombia and declare the Republic of Arauca. He proceeds to pillage the region before fleeing to Venezuela.
(December 17 Old Style) – The mystic Grigori Rasputin is murdered in Saint Petersburg.
December 31 – The Hampton Terrace Hotel in North Augusta, South Carolina, one of the largest and most luxurious hotels in the nation at the time, burns to the ground.
January 1 – The British Royal Army Medical Corps first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled.
January 9 – Battle of Gallipoli: Last British troops evacuated from Gallipoli, as the Ottoman Empire prevails over a joint British and French operation to capture Istanbul.
January 13 – WWI: The Battle of Wadi occurs between Allied British and Ottoman Empire forces, during the Mesopotamian campaign in modern-day Iraq.
January 24
In Browning, Montana, the temperature drops from +6.7°C to -48.8°C (44°F to -56°F) in one day, the greatest change ever on record for a 24-hour period.
Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad: The Supreme Court of the United States upholds the national income tax.
January 29 – WWI: Paris is bombed by German zeppelins for the first time.
January 31 – WWI: an attack was planned on Verdun
February
February 3 – Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Canada are burned down.
February 9 – 6.00 p.m. – Tristan Tzara "founds" the art movement Dadaism (according to Hans Arp).
February 11
Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control in the United States.
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presents its first concert.
The Romanian football club Sportul Studenţesc is founded.
February 21 – WWI: The Battle of Verdun begins in France.
March
March 7 – In Munich German automobile company BMW (Die Bayerischen Motoren Werke) is founded
March 8–9 – Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa leads about 500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico, killing 12 U.S. soldiers. A garrison of the U.S. 13th Cavalry Regiment fights back and drives them away.
March 15 – States President Woodrow Wilson sends 12,000 United States troops over the U.S.–Mexico border to pursue Pancho Villa; the 13th Cavalry regiment enters Mexican territory.
March 16 – Mexican Revolution: The U.S. 7th and 10th Cavalry regiments under John J. Pershing cross the border to join the hunt for Villa.
March 22
The last Emperor of China, Yuan Shikai, abdicates the throne and the Republic of China (1912–49) is restored.
J. R. R. Tolkien marries Edith Bratt in England (they would serve as the inspiration for the fictional characters Lúthien and Beren).
March 24 – The French ferry SS Sussex is torpedoed by SM UB-29 in the English Channel with at least 50 killed (including the composer Enrique Granados), resulting on May 4 in the Sussex pledge by Germany to the United States suspending its intensified submarine warfare policy.[1]
April
The Proclamation of the Irish Republic which was distributed during the Easter Rising.
April – The light switch is invented by William J. Newton and Morris Goldberg.
April 11 – WWI – Egyptian Expeditionary Force begins occupation of the Sinai Peninsula
April 20 – The Chicago Cubs play their first game at Weeghman Park (modern-day Wrigley Field), defeating the Cincinnati Reds 7–6 in 11 innings.
April 22 – The Chinese steamer ship Hsin-Yu capsizes off the Chinese coast; at least 1,000 are killed.
April 24–30 – The Easter Rising occurs in Ireland. Members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood proclaim an Irish Republic and the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army occupy the General Post Office and other buildings in Dublin before surrendering to the British Army.
April 24–May 10 – Voyage of the James Caird: an open boat journey from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands to South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean (800 nautical miles (1,500 km; 920 mi)) undertaken by Sir Ernest Shackleton and five companions to obtain rescue for the main body of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition following the loss of its ship Endurance.
April 27 – WWI – Gas attack at Hulluch in France: The 47th Brigade, 16th (Irish) Division is decimated in one of the most heavily concentrated German gas attacks of the war.
April 29 – WWI – Siege of Kut ends with the surrender of British forces to the Ottoman Empire at Kut-al-Amara on the Tigris in Basra Vilayet during the Mesopotamian campaign.
May
May 11 – Max Reger, German Composer, died in Leipzig, Germany.
May 15 – Jesse Washington, a black farmhand, is brutally lynched in Robinson, Texas by a crowd of white people, for murdering his employers' wife. It is disputed whether Jesse really committed the crime, or was just being used as a scapegoat.
May 16
United States Marines invade the Dominican Republic.
Britain and France conclude the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement, which is to divide Arab areas of the Ottoman Empire, following the conclusion of WWI, into French and British spheres of influence.
May 20 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting (Boy with Baby Carriage).
May 21 – Britain initiates daylight saving time.
May 22 – The case of United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola is decided.
May 31–June 1 – WWI – Battle of Jutland between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet[2] in the North Sea, the war's only large-scale clash of battleships. The result is tactically inconclusive but British dominance of the North Sea is maintained
June
June – Arab Revolt begins
June 4 – WWI – The Brusilov Offensive, the height of Russian operations in the war, begins with their breaking through Austro-Hungarian lines.
June 5
Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
The HMS Hampshire sinks having hit a mine off the Orkney Islands, Scotland, with Lord Kitchener aboard.
June 15 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America.[3]
July
July 1–November 18 – WWI – Battle of the Somme, opening with the Battle of Albert: More than one million soldiers die; with 57,470 British Empire casualties on the first day, 19,240 of them killed, the British Army's bloodiest day.[4] The immediate result is tactically inconclusive.
July 1–12 – At least one shark attacks 5 swimmers along 80 miles (130 km) of New Jersey coastline during the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916, resulting in 4 deaths and the survival of one youth who requires limb amputation. This event is the inspiration for author Peter Benchley, over half a century later, to write Jaws.
July 2 – Battle of Erzincan: Russian forces defeat troops of the Ottoman Empire in Armenia.
July 15 – In Seattle, William Boeing incorporates Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing).
July 15–19 – During the Battle of Delville Wood 766 men from the South African Brigade are killed in South Africa's biggest loss during World War I.
July 19–20 – WWI – Battle of Fromelles: An attack by Australian and British troops is repulsed by the German army with heavy casualties.
July 22 – In San Francisco, a bomb explodes on Market Street during a Preparedness Day parade, killing 10 injuring 40 (Warren Billings and Tom Mooney are later wrongly convicted of it).
July 29 – In Ontario, Canada, a lightning strike ignites a forest fire that destroys the towns of Cochrane and Matheson, killing 233.
July 30 – German agents cause the Black Tom explosion in Jersey City, New Jersey, an act of sabotage destroying an ammunition depot and killing at least 7 people.
August
August 3–5 – WWI (Sinai and Palestine Campaign): Battle of Romani: British Imperial troops secure victory over a joint Ottoman-German force.
August 7 – WWI: Portugal joins the Allies.
August 9 – Lassen Volcanic National Park is established in California.
August 21 – Peru declares neutrality.
August 25 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs legislation creating the National Park Service.
August 27 – WWI: The Kingdom of Romania declares war on the Central Powers, entering the war on the side of the Allies.
August 28 – WWI:
Germany declares war on Romania.
Italy declares war on Germany.
August 29
The United States passes the Philippine Autonomy Act.
The Chinese steamer Hsin-Yu capsizes off the Chinese coast; at least 1,000 are killed.
September
September 1 – Bulgaria declares war on Romania, going on to take Dobruja.
September 2 – British pilot Leefe Robinson becomes the first to shoot down a German airship over Britain.
September 5 – Release of D. W. Griffith's film Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages in the United States.
September 11 – A mechanical failure causes the central span of the Quebec Bridge, a cantilever-type structure, to crash into the Saint Lawrence River for the second time, killing 13 workers.
September 13 – Mary, a circus elephant, is hanged in the town of Erwin, Tennessee for killing her handler, Walter "Red" Eldridge.
September 15–22 – WWI – Battle of Flers–Courcelette in France: British advance. The battle is significant for the first use of the tank in warfare; also for the debut of the Canadian and New Zealand Divisions in the Battle of the Somme.
September 27 – Iyasu V of Ethiopia is deposed in a palace coup, in favour of his aunt Zewditu.
October
Troops from New Zealand during WWI.
October 12 – Hipólito Yrigoyen is elected President of Argentina.
October 14 – Perm State University is founded in Russia.
October 16 – Margaret Sanger opens the first U.S. birth control clinic - a forerunner of Planned Parenthood.
October 21 – Friedrich Adler shoots Karl von Stürgkh, Prime Minister of Austria.
October 27 – Battle of Segale: Negus Mikael of Wollo, marching on the Ethiopian capital in support of his son Emperor Iyasu, is defeated by Fitawrari Habte Giyorgis, securing the throne for Empress Zauditu.
November
November 1
Pavel Milyukov delivers his "stupidity or treason" speech in the Russian State Duma, precipitating the downfall of the Boris Stürmer government.
The first 40-hour work week officially begins in the Endicott-Johnson factories of Western New York.
November 5
The Kingdom of Poland is proclaimed by a joint act of the emperors of Germany and Austria.
Honan Chapel, Cork, Ireland, a product of the Irish Arts and Crafts movement (1894–1925), is dedicated.
November 7
U.S. presidential election, 1916: Democratic President Woodrow Wilson narrowly defeats Republican Charles E. Hughes.
Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the United States House of Representatives.
November 13 – Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes is expelled from the Labor Party over his support for conscription.
November 18 – WWI – Battle of the Somme: In France, British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle, which started on July 1.
November 21 – WWI – Hospital ship HMHS Britannic, designed as the third Olympic-class ocean liner for White Star Line, sinks in the Kea Channel of the Aegean Sea after hitting a mine. 30 lives are lost. At 48,158 gross register tons, she is the largest ship lost during the war.
November 22 – Writer Jack London dies of kidney failure at his California home aged 40.
November 23 – WWI – Eastern Front: Bucharest, the capital of Romania, is occupied by troops of the Central Powers.
December
December 12 – In the Dolomites, 100 avalanches bury 18,000 Austrian and Italian soldiers.
December 18 – WWI: The Battle of Verdun ends in France with German troops defeated.
December 21 – WWI: El Arish occupied by the British Empire Desert Column during advance across the Sinai Peninsula.
December 22 – The British Sopwith Camel aircraft makes its maiden flight. It is designed to counter the German's Fokker aircraft.
December 23 – WWI: The Desert Column captures the Ottoman garrison during the Battle of Magdhaba.
December 30
Humberto Gómez and his mercenaries seize Arauca in Colombia and declare the Republic of Arauca. He proceeds to pillage the region before fleeing to Venezuela.
(December 17 Old Style) – The mystic Grigori Rasputin is murdered in Saint Petersburg.
December 31 – The Hampton Terrace Hotel in North Augusta, South Carolina, one of the largest and most luxurious hotels in the nation at the time, burns to the ground.