1915

1915 in various calendars
Gregorian calendar	1915; MCMXV
Ab urbe condita	2668
Armenian calendar	1364; ԹՎ ՌՅԿԴ
Assyrian calendar	6665
Bahá'í calendar	71–72
Bengali calendar	1322
Berber calendar	2865
British Regnal year	5 Geo. 5 – 6 Geo. 5
Buddhist calendar	2459
Burmese calendar	1277
Byzantine calendar	7423–7424
Chinese calendar	甲寅年 (Wood Tiger); 4611 or 4551; — to —; 乙卯年 (Wood Rabbit); 4612 or 4552
Coptic calendar	1631–1632
Discordian calendar	3081
Ethiopian calendar	1907–1908
Hebrew calendar	5675–5676
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	1971–1972
- Shaka Samvat	1836–1837
- Kali Yuga	5015–5016
Holocene calendar	11915
Igbo calendar	915–916
Iranian calendar	1293–1294
Islamic calendar	1333–1334
Japanese calendar	Taishō 4; (大正４年)
Javanese calendar	1845–1846
Juche calendar	4
Julian calendar	Gregorian minus 13 days
Korean calendar	4248
Minguo calendar	ROC 4; 民國4年
Nanakshahi calendar	447
Thai solar calendar	2457–2458
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Millennium:	2nd millennium
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Decades:	1890s; 1900s; 1910s; 1920s; 1930s;
Years:	1912; 1913; 1914; 1915; 1916; 1917; 1918;

1915 January February March April May June July August September October November December

1915 (MCMXV) was a common year starting on Friday (dominical letter C) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Thursday (dominical letter D) of the Julian calendar, the 1915th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 915th year of the 2nd millennium, the 15th year of the 20th century, and the 6th year of the 1910s decade. As of the start of 1915, the Gregorian calendar was 13 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

Events[edit]

January 1: HMS Formidable, sunk by a German U-boat.

Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix.

January[edit]

January 1
- WWI: The Royal Navy battleship HMS Formidable is sunk off Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, by an Imperial German Navy U-boat with the loss of 547 crew.
- The Battle of Broken Hill, a train ambush near Broken Hill, New South Wales, in Australia, is carried out by two men (claiming to be in support of the Ottoman Empire) who are killed together with 4 civilians.
- Harry Houdini performs a straitjacket escape performance.^[1]^[2]
January 5 – Joseph E. Carberry sets an altitude record of 11,690 feet (3,560 m), carrying Capt. Benjamin Delahauf Foulois as a passenger in a fixed-wing aircraft.
January 12
- The United States House of Representatives rejects a proposal to give women the right to vote.
- 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.
January 13 – The 6.7 Mw Avezzano earthquake shakes the Province of L'Aquila in Italy with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). Various agencies estimate the number of people killed to be 29,978–32,610.
January 18 – Twenty-One Demands from Japan to China are made.
January 19
- Georges Claude patents the neon discharge tube for use in advertising.
- WWI: German Zeppelins bomb the coastal towns of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn in England for the first time, killing more than 20.
January 21 – Kiwanis is founded in Detroit, as The Supreme Lodge Benevolent Order Brothers.
January 24 – WW I: Battle of Dogger Bank: British Grand Fleet defeats the German High Seas Fleet, sinking the armoured cruiser SMS Blücher.^[3]
January 25
- First United States coast-to-coast long-distance telephone call, 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.
- Emory College is rechartered as Emory University, and plans to move its main campus from Oxford, Georgia to Atlanta.
January 26 – The Rocky Mountain National Park is established by an act of the United States Congress.
January 26 – WWI: Ottoman Army begins the Raid on the Suez Canal.
January 27 – WWI: Military casualties begin arriving at the Hôpital Temporaire d'Arc-en-Barrois, established earlier in the month.
January 28 – An act of the United States Congress designates the United States Coast Guard, began in 1790, as a military branch.
January 31 – WWI: 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 during the Battle of Bolimów; however, freezing temperatures prevent it being effective.^[4]

January 28: United States Coast Guard military branch

February[edit]

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.
February 4 – The Maritz Rebellion of disaffected Boere against the government of the Union of South Africa ends with the surrender of remaining rebels.
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.
February 18 – WWI: Germany regards waters around the British Isles to be a war zone from this date, as part of its U-boat campaign.
February 20 – In San Francisco the Panama–Pacific International Exposition is opened.

March[edit]

March – The 1915 Palestine locust infestation breaks out in Palestine; it continues until October.
March 3 – The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor of NASA, is founded in the United States.
March 10–13 – WWI: Battle of Neuve Chapelle, the first deliberately planned British offensive of the War: British Indian troops overrun German positions in France, but are unable to sustain the advance.
March 11 – WWI: British armed merchantman HMS Bayano (1913) 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.^[5]
March 14 – WWI:
- 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.
- Constantinople Agreement: Britain, France and the Russian Empire agree to give Constantinople and the Bosphorus to Russia in case of victory (the treaty is later nullified by the Bolshevik Revolution).
March 18
- WWI: A British attack on the Dardanelles fails.
- British Royal Navy battleship HMS Dreadnought (1906) 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.
March 19 – Pluto is photographed for the first time but is not classified as a planet.
March 25 – The U.S. submarine F-4 sinks off Hawaii; 21 are killed.
March 26 – The Vancouver Millionaires win the Stanley Cup in ice hockey over the Ottawa Senators three games to zero.
March 28 – The first Roman Catholic liturgy is celebrated by Archbishop John Ireland at the newly consecrated Cathedral of Saint Paul in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

March 14: WWI: SMS Dresden, forced to scuttle by the Royal Navy.

April[edit]

April 5 – Boxer Jess Willard, the latest "Great White Hope", 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".
April 11 – Charlie Chaplin's film The Tramp released.
April 22 – WWI: Start of Second Battle of Ypres. First large scale use of poison gas on the Western Front by the Germans.
April 24 – Beginning of the Armenian Genocide with the deportation of Armenian notables from Istanbul.
April 25 – WWI: Start of the Gallipoli Campaign (lasting until January 1916): Landing at Anzac Cove by Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and landing at Cape Helles by British and French troops to begin the Allied invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire.

May 7: WWI: RMS Lusitania, sunk by a German U-boat.

April 26 – Treaty of London: Italy secretly agrees to leave the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary and join with the Triple Entente.

May[edit]

May 1 – WWI: General Louis Botha, Prime Minister of South Africa, leads the army in the occupation of German South West Africa.
May 3 – Canadian soldier John McCrae writes the poem "In Flanders Fields".
May 5 – WWI: Forces of the Ottoman Empire begin shelling ANZAC Cove from a new position behind their lines.
May 6 – Baseball player Babe Ruth hits his first career home run (off Jack Warhop), for the Boston Red Sox.
May 7 – WWI: Sinking of the RMS Lusitania: British ocean liner RMS Lusitania is sunk by Imperial German Navy U-boat U-20 off the south-west coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 civilians en route from New York City to Liverpool.
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.
May 17 – The last purely Liberal government in the United Kingdom ends when Prime Minister Herbert Asquith forms an all-party coalition government, the Second Asquith ministry, with effect from May 25.
May 19 – WWI: Third attack on Anzac Cove by Ottoman forces is repelled by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.
May 22
- Quintinshill rail disaster in Scotland: collision and fire kill 226, mostly troops, the largest number of fatalities in a rail accident in the United Kingdom.
- 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 last volcano to erupt in the contiguous United States until the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
May 24 – WWI: Italy joins the Allies after they declare war on Austria-Hungary.
May 25 – China agrees to the Twenty-One Demands of the Japanese.
May 29 – Teófilo Braga becomes president of Portugal.

June[edit]

June 3 – Mexican Revolution: Troops of Obregón and Villa clash at León: Obregón loses his right arm in grenade attack but Villa is decisively defeated.
June 5 – Women's suffrage is introduced in Denmark and Iceland.
June 9 – U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigns over a disagreement regarding his nation's handling of the RMS Lusitania sinking.
June 16 – The British Women's Institute is founded.
June 19 – Iceland gets their own flag, the same day that women over the age of 40 get the right to vote

July[edit]

July – 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.
July 1 – WWI: In aerial warfare, German fighter pilot Kurt Wintgens becomes the first person to shoot down another plane in using a machine gun equipped with synchronization gear.
July 7
- An extremely overloaded International Railway (New York–Ontario) trolleycar with 157 passengers crashes near Queenston, Ontario, resulting in 15 casualties.
- 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.
July 9 – WWI: Theodore Seitz, governor of German South West Africa, surrenders to General Louis Botha between Otavi and Tsumeb.
July 11 – WWI: Battle of Rufiji Delta – German cruiser SMS Königsberg (1905) is forced to scuttle in the Rufiji River.
July 14 – The McMahon–Hussein Correspondence between Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca and the British oficial Henry McMahon concerning the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire begins.
July 22 – WWI: "The Great Retreat" is ordered on Eastern front - Russian forces pull back out of Poland (then part of Russia), taking machinery and equipment with them.
July 24 – The steamer Eastland capsizes in central Chicago, with the loss of 844 lives.
July 28 – The American occupation of Haiti (1915–34) begins.

August[edit]

August: Destruction by the 1915 Galveston hurricane.

August 5–23 – Hurricane Two of the 1915 Atlantic hurricane season over Galveston and New Orleans leaves 275 dead.
August 6 – WWI: Battle of Sari Bair: The Allies mount a diversionary attack timed to coincide with a major Allied landing of reinforcements at Suvla Bay.
August 16 – WWI: The Entente promises 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).
August 17 – Jewish American Leo Frank is lynched for the alleged murder of a 13-year-old girl in Atlanta.
August 31 – Jimmy Lavender of the Chicago Cubs pitches a no-hitter against the New York Giants.

September[edit]

September 5 – The beginning of the Zimmerwald Conference in Switzerland.
September 6 – The prototype military tank is first tested by the British Army.
September 7 – Former cartoonist John B. Gruelle is given a patent for his Raggedy Ann doll.
September 8 – WWI: A Zeppelin raid destroys No.61 Farringdon Road, London. It Is rebuilt in 1917 and called The Zeppelin Building.
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.
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.
September 30 – WWI: Serbian Army private Radoje Ljutovac became the first soldier in history to shoot down an enemy aircraft with ground-to-air fire.

October[edit]

October 12 – WWI: British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape from Belgium.
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.
October 16 – WWI: France declares war on Bulgaria.
October 19
- WWI: Russia and Italy declare war on Bulgaria.
- Mexican Revolution: The U.S. recognizes the Mexican government of Venustiano Carranza de facto (not de jure until 1917).
October 21 United Daughters of the Confederacy holds its first annual meeting outside the South, in San Francisco. Historian General of the UDC, Mildred Rutherford address the gathering on the "Historical Sins of Omission & Commission" of Yankee historians.
October 23 – WWI: Torpedoing of the armored cruiser SMS Prinz Adalbert (1901) results in only three 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.
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.^[6]
October 27 – William Morris "Billy" Hughes becomes the 7th Prime Minister of Australia.
October 28 – St. Johns School fire: Fire at St. John's School in Peabody, Massachusetts, claims the lives of 21 girls between the ages of 7 and 17.
October – Franz Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) is first published in Germany.^[7]

November[edit]

November 18 – Release of the U.S. silent film Inspiration, the first mainstream movie in which a leading actress (Audrey Munson) appears nude.
November 23 – The Triangle Film Corporation opens its new motion picture theater in Massillon, Ohio.
November 24 – William J. Simmons revives the Civil War era Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain, Georgia.
November 25 – Einstein's theory of general relativity is formulated.

December[edit]

December 10 – The 1 millionth Ford car rolls off the assembly line at the River Rouge Plant in Detroit.
December 12 – President of the Republic of China Yuan Shikai declares himself Emperor.
December 18 – United States President Woodrow Wilson marries Mrs Edith B. Galt in Washington, D.C.
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.
December 26 – The Irish Republican Brotherhood Military Council decides to stage an Easter Rising in 1916.

Date unknown[edit]

In exchange for assistance against the Ottoman Empire, the British offer Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, their recognition of an independent Arab kingdom, although clear terms are never agreed.^[8]
Alfred Wegener publishes his theory of Pangaea.
The first stop sign appears in Detroit.
Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis is founded.