Directory

1915 CE

The Sinking of the RMS Lusitania by a German U-boat kills nearly 1,200 people, including 128 Americans, heightening tensions between Germany and the United States; The Gallipoli campaign begins as Allied forces attempt an amphibious invasion of the Ottoman Empire, ending in failure; The Armenian genocide starts with the arrest, deportation, and mass extermination of up to 1.5 million Armenians; The Gorlice–Tarnów offensive breaks Russian lines in Galicia, shifting the Eastern Front in favor of the Central Powers; The Second Battle of Ypres marks the first large-scale use of poison gas on the Western Front; Italy joins the Allies, opening the Italian Front against Austria-Hungary.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • January 12 – The United States House of Representatives rejects a proposal to give women the right to vote.source
  • January 26 – The Rocky Mountain National Park is established by an act of the United States Congress.source
  • April 26 – Treaty of London: Italy secretly agrees to leave the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, and join with the Entente Powers, in exchange for certain territories of Austria-Hungary on its borders.source
  • May 17 – The last purely Liberal government in the United Kingdom ends, when the prime minister H. H. Asquith forms an all-party coalition government, the Asquith coalition ministry, effective May 25.source
  • May 25 – China agrees to the Twenty-One Demands of the Japanese.source
  • June 19 – In Iceland, at this time a dependency of Denmark, women's suffrage is granted to those over 40.source
  • July 14 – The McMahon–Hussein Correspondence between Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca and the British official Sir Henry McMahon concerning the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire begins; in exchange for assistance against the Ottomans, the British offer bin Ali their recognition of an independent Arab kingdom, although clear terms are never agreed.source
  • August 16 – WWI: The Allies promise the Kingdom of Serbia, should victory be achieved over Austria-Hungary and its allied Central Powers, the territories of Baranja, Srem and Slavonia from the Cisleithanian part of the Dual Monarchy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and eastern Dalmatia (from the river of Krka to Bar).source
  • October 19 – Mexican Revolution: The U.S. recognizes the Mexican government of Venustiano Carranza de facto (not de jure until 1917).source
  • October 27 – William Morris "Billy" Hughes becomes the 7th prime minister of Australia.source
  • December 12 – President of the Republic of China Yuan Shikai declares himself Emperor.source

Conflict & Security

  • January 1 – WWI: Battle of Broken Hill: A train ambush near Broken Hill, Australia, is carried out by two men (claiming to be in support of the Ottoman Empire) who are killed, together with four civilians.source
  • January 17 – WWI: Caucasus Campaign – Battle of Sarikamish: Russia defeats Ottoman Turkey.source
  • January 23 – Chilembwe uprising: Baptist minister John Chilembwe initiates an ultimately unsuccessful uprising against British colonial rule in Nyasaland (modern-day Malawi).source
  • January 24 – WWI: Battle of Dogger Bank – The British Grand Fleet defeats the German High Seas Fleet, sinking the armoured cruiser .source
  • January 31 – WWI: Battle of Bolimów – Germany's first large-scale use of poison gas as a weapon occurs, when 18,000 artillery shells containing liquid xylyl bromide tear gas are fired on the Imperial Russian Army, on the Rawka River west of Warsaw; however, freezing temperatures prevent it being effective.source
  • February 18 – WWI: Germany regards the waters around the British Isles to be a war zone from this date, as part of its U-boat Campaign.source
  • Gallipoli campaign: A Franco-British naval attack on the Dardanelles fails.source
  • Constantinople Agreement: Britain, France and the Russian Empire agree to give Constantinople (Istanbul) and the Bosphorus to Russia in case of victory (the treaty is later nullified by the Bolshevik Revolution).source
  • Battle of Más a Tierra: Off the coast of Chile, the British Royal Navy forces the Imperial German Navy light cruiser SMS Dresden (last survivor of the German East Asia Squadron) to scuttle.source
  • April 24 – Armenian genocide: deportation of Armenian notables from Istanbul begins.source
  • April 25 – WWI: Start of the Gallipoli Campaign by land forces (lasting until January 1916) – A landing at Anzac Cove is conducted by Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and a landing at Cape Helles by British and French troops, to begin the Allied invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire.source
  • May 1 – General Louis Botha, Prime Minister of South Africa, leads the army in the occupation of German South West Africa.source
  • May 9 – WWI – Second Battle of Artois: German and French forces fight to a standstill; German forces defeat the British at the Battle of Aubers Ridge.source
  • June 3 – Mexican Revolution: Troops of Álvaro Obregón and Pancho Villa clash at León; Obregón loses his right arm in a grenade attack, but Villa is decisively defeated.source
  • July 7 – Sinhalese militia captain Henry Pedris is executed in British Ceylon for inciting race riots, a charge later proved false; he becomes a hero of the Sri Lankan independence movement.source
  • WWI: South West Africa Campaign – The Union of South Africa occupies German South West Africa with assistance from Canada, the United Kingdom, the Portuguese Republic and Portuguese Angola. South Africa will occupy South West Africa until March 1990.source
  • September 8 – WWI: A Zeppelin raid destroys No. 61 Farringdon Road, London; the premises are rebuilt in 1917, and called The Zeppelin Building.source
  • September 12 – French soldiers rescue over 4,000 Armenian genocide survivors stranded on Musa Dagh, a mountain in the Hatay province of Turkey.source
  • September 25–October 14 – WWI: Battle of Loos – British forces take the French town of Loos, but with substantial casualties, and are unable to press their advantage. This is the first time the British use poison gas in World War I, and also their first large-scale use of 'New' (or Kitchener's Army) units.source
  • October 15 – WWI: Serbian Campaign – Austria-Hungary invades the Kingdom of Serbia. Bulgaria enters the war, also invading Serbia. The Serbian First Army retreats towards Greece.source
  • October 21 – The United Daughters of the Confederacy holds its first annual meeting outside the South, in San Francisco. Historian General Mildred Rutherford addresses the gathering on the "Historical Sins of Omission & Commission", of Yankee historians.source
  • October 23 – WWI: The torpedoing of armored cruiser results in only 3 men being rescued from a crew of 675, the greatest single loss of life for the Imperial German Navy in the Baltic Sea during the war.source
  • November 24 – William J. Simmons revives the American Civil War era Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain, Georgia.source
  • December 26 – The Irish Republican Brotherhood Military Council decides to stage an Easter Rising in 1916.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • February 20 – In San Francisco, the Panama–Pacific International Exposition is opened.source
  • April 21 – On the orders of Talat Pasha, Haydar Bey organized an expedition against the Assyrians. He killed thousands of Assyrians along with Kurdish tribes.source
  • May 6 – Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition: SY Auroras drift – The breaks loose from its anchorage during a gale, beginning a 312-day ordeal.source
  • November 21 – British polar exploration ship Endurance finally breaks apart from pressure of ice around it and sinks into the Weddell Sea, stranding Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition party in the Antarctic. The wreck is discovered at a depth of 3,008 metres (9,869 ft), 107 years later in 2022.source
  • December 4–18 – The 'Peace Ship' Oscar II chartered by industrialist Henry Ford sails from Hoboken, New Jersey to Oslo on an independent and eventually unsuccessful mission to broker a peace conference.source

Economy & Finance

  • February 1 – William Fox creates the Fox Film Corporation.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • January 19 – Georges Claude patents the neon discharge tube for use in advertising.source
  • January 25 – The first United States coast-to-coast long-distance telephone call is facilitated by a newly invented vacuum tube amplifier, ceremonially inaugurated by Alexander Graham Bell in New York City and his former assistant Thomas A. Watson, in San Francisco, California.source
  • January 26 – WWI: The Ottoman Army begins the Raid on the Suez Canal.source
  • July 1 – WWI: In aerial warfare, German fighter pilot Kurt Wintgens becomes the first person to shoot down another plane, using a machine gun equipped with synchronization gear.source
  • September 6 – The prototype military tank is first tested by the British Army.source
  • September 7 – Cartoonist John B. Gruelle is given a patent for his Raggedy Ann doll.source
  • September 11 – The Pennsylvania Railroad begins electrified commuter rail service between Paoli and Philadelphia, using overhead AC trolley wires for power. This type of system is later used in long-distance passenger trains between New York City, Washington, D.C., and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.source
  • September 30 – WWI: Serbian Army private Radoje Ljutovac becomes the first soldier in history to shoot down an enemy aircraft, with ground-to-air fire.source
  • November 23 – The Triangle Film Corporation opens its new motion picture theater in Massillon, Ohio.source
  • December 10 – The 1 millionth Ford car rolls off the assembly line at the River Rouge Plant in Detroit, Michigan.source

Science & Discovery

  • January 5 – Joseph E. Carberry sets an altitude record of 11,690 ft m, carrying Capt. Benjamin Delahauf Foulois as a passenger, in a fixed-wing aircraft.source
  • January – British physicist Sir Joseph Larmor publishes his observations on "The Influence of Local Atmospheric Cooling on Astronomical Refraction".source
  • March 19 – Pluto is photographed for the first time, but is not recognised for what it is.source
  • November 25 – Albert Einstein presents part of his theory of general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.source

Health & Medicine

  • February – While working as a cook at New York's Sloane Hospital for Women under an assumed name, "Typhoid Mary" (an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever) infects 25 people, and is placed in quarantine for life on March 27.source
  • March – The 1915 Palestine locust infestation breaks out in Palestine; it continues until October.source
  • October 25 – Lyda Conley, the first American Indian woman to appear before the Supreme Court of the United States as a lawyer, is admitted to practice there.source
  • November 18 – The U.S. silent film Inspiration, the first mainstream movie in which a leading actress (Audrey Munson) appears nude, is released.source
  • December 23 – HMHS Britannic, which will be the largest British ship lost in WWI (though with only 30 fatalities), departs Liverpool on her maiden voyage as a hospital ship.source

Crime & Justice

  • January 12 – A Fool There Was premières in the United States, starring Theda Bara as a femme fatale; she quickly becomes one of early cinema's most sensational stars.source
  • June – Armenian genocide: 15,000 civilians from the Ottoman Armenian population of Bitlis are massacred by Ottoman Turks and Kurds.source
  • Armenian genocide: 17,000 civilians from the Ottoman Armenian population of Trebizond are massacred by Ottoman Turks.source
  • October 12 – WWI: British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad, for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium.source

Disasters & Accidents

  • January 1 – WWI: British Royal Navy battleship HMS Formidable is sunk off Lyme Regis, England, by an Imperial German Navy U-boat, with the loss of 547 crew.source
  • January 19 – WWI: German Zeppelins bomb the coastal towns of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn in England for the first time, killing more than 20.source
  • March 11 – WWI: British armed merchantman is sunk in the North Channel off the coast of Scotland by Imperial German Navy U-boat SM U-27. Around 200 crew are lost, a number of bodies being washed up on the Isle of Man, with only 26 saved.source
  • British Royal Navy battleship sinks German submarine U-29 with all hands in the Pentland Firth off the coast of Scotland by ramming her, the only time this tactic is known to have been successfully used by a battleship.source
  • May 22 – Quintinshill rail disaster in Scotland: The collision and fire kill 226, mostly troops, the largest number of fatalities in a rail accident in the United Kingdom.source
  • Sinking of the RMS Lusitania: 's main rival, the British ocean liner , is sunk by Imperial German Navy U-boat U-20 off the south-west coast of Ireland, killing 1,199 civilians en route from New York City to Liverpool. The best-known of the celebrities on board is American sportsman Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt.source
  • June 11 – Friar Leonard Melki and hundreds of other Christians are driven out of Mardin and massacred by Ottoman troops.source
  • July 7 – An overloaded International Railway (New York–Ontario) trolleycar with 157 passengers crashes near Queenston, Ontario, resulting in 15 deaths.source
  • July 24 – Steamer capsizes in central Chicago, with the loss of 844 lives.source
  • October 28 – St. Johns School fire: Fire at St. John's School in Peabody, Massachusetts, United States, claims the lives of 21 girls between the ages of 7 and 17.source

Climate & Environment

  • January 13 – 1915 Avezzano earthquake hits Italy, around 30,000 people are killed.source
  • March 2 – Armenian genocide: Earliest recorded deportations.source
  • May 22 – Lassen Peak, one of the Cascade Volcanoes in California, erupts, sending an ash plume 30,000 feet in the air, and devastating the nearby area with pyroclastic flows and lahars. It is the only volcano to erupt in the contiguous United States this century, until the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.source
  • August 5–23 – Hurricane Two of the 1915 Atlantic hurricane season over Galveston and New Orleans leaves 275 dead.source

Culture & Society

  • January 21 – Kiwanis is founded in Detroit, Michigan, as The Supreme Lodge Benevolent Order Brothers.source
  • February 8 – The controversial film The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith, premieres in Los Angeles. It will be the highest-grossing film for around 25 years.source
  • April 5 – Boxer Jess Willard defeats Jack Johnson with a 26th-round knockout in sweltering heat, at Havana, Cuba. Willard becomes very popular among white Americans, for "bringing back the championship to the white race".source
  • June 16 – Women's Institutes are established in Britain.source
  • September 5 – The Zimmerwald Conference begins in Switzerland.source
  • December 8 – Jean Sibelius conducts the world première of his Symphony No. 5 in Helsinki at a 50th birthday concert for him.source
  • December 18 – United States president Woodrow Wilson marries Edith B. Galt, in Washington, D.C.source

Births

  • January 23 – Potter Stewart, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1985)source
  • January 23 – W. Arthur Lewis, Saint Lucian economist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1991)source
  • February 28 – Peter Medawar, Brazilian-born scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1987)source
  • March 6 – Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, Indian leader of the Dawoodi Bohra Community (d. 2014)source
  • April 3 – Piet de Jong, Dutch politician, naval officer, Minister of Defence and Prime Minister of the Netherlands (d. 2016)source
  • May 6 – Orson Welles, American actor and director (d. 1985)source
  • June 10 – Saul Bellow, Canadian-born American writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2005)source
  • June 16 – Mariano Rumor, Italian politician, prime minister (1968-1970, 1973-1974) (d. 1990)source
  • July 28 – Charles H. Townes, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2015)source
  • August 27 – Norman Ramsey Jr., American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2011)source
  • November 1 – Frances Hesselbein, President of the Girl Scouts of the USA, CEO of the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute (d. 2022)source
  • November 19 – Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr., American physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1974)source
  • November 30 – Henry Taube, Canadian-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2005)source
  • December 12 – Frank Sinatra, American singer, actor (d. 1998)source

Deaths

  • March 4 – William Willett, English promoter of daylight saving time (b. 1856)source
  • March 13 – Sergei Witte, Russian aristocrat, statesman and Prime Minister (b. 1849)source
  • March 21 – Frederick Winslow Taylor, American engineer, economist (b. 1856)source
  • May 7 – Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, American sportsman (b. 1877; died in the Sinking of the RMS Lusitania)source
  • May 9 – Anthony Wilding, New Zealand tennis player (killed in action) (b. 1883)source
  • May 27 – Armenian genocide: The Tehcir Law is promulgated by the Turkish Ottoman Empire authorizing deportation of the Ottoman Armenian population to Deir ez-Zor in the Syrian desert, leading to the deaths of anywhere between 800,000 and over 1,500,000 civilians and confiscation of their property.source
  • June 10 – Ignatius Maloyan, Ottoman Armenian Eastern Catholic archbishop, martyr and saint (b. 1869)source
  • July 16 – Ellen G. White, American prophetess, co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, most translated American author (b. 1827)source
  • July 22 – Sir Sandford Fleming, Canadian engineer and inventor (b. 1827)source
  • August 17 – Leo Frank, Jewish-American factory superintendent who was lynched after the murder of Mary Phagan (b. 1884)source
  • August 20 – Paul Ehrlich, German scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1854)source
  • October 4 – John Rigby, grandfather of Eleanor Rigby, to whom Paul McCartney attributes a subconscious influence on naming the song with the same name (b.1843)source
  • October 12 – Edith Cavell, British nurse, war heroine (shot) (b. 1865)source
  • October 30 – Sir Charles Tupper, 6th prime minister of Canada (b. 1821)source