1916

1916 is a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar)

Events

January-February

• January 1 -The first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled. Impressionist Monet paints 'Water Lilies'.
• January 8 – Allied forces withdraw from Gallipoli
• January 17 – The Professional Golfers Association (PGA) is formed
• January 18 – A 611 gram chondrite type meteorite struck a house near Baxter, Stone County, Missouri.
• January 23 to 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.
• January 24 – In Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad the Supreme Court of the United States declares the federal income tax void
• January 28 – Louis D. Brandeis becomes the first Jew appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States.
• January 29 – World War I: Paris is bombed by German zeppelins for the first time.
• February 2 – Blizzard in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
• February 3 – Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Canada are burned down.
• February 11 – Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control.
• February 11 – Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presents its 1st concert
• February 21 – World War I: In France the Battle of Verdun begins.

March-June

• March 1 – Liberal British Columbia Premier Harlan Carey Brewster term in office ends
• March 6 – Sydney conservatorium of music in Australia accepts first students
• March 9 – Pancho Villa leads 1,500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17.
• March 15 – President Woodrow Wilson sends 12,000 United States troops over the Mexican border to pursue Pancho Villa.
• March 19 – First United States air combat mission in history as eight US planes take off in pursuit of Pancho Villa
• March 22 – Marriage of Edith Bratt and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. They would serve as the inspiration for the fictional characters Lúthien and Beren.
• April 24 – April 30 – Easter Rising in Ireland
• May 5 – American marines invade the Dominican Republic.
• May 20 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting ("Boy with Baby Carriage").
• May 21 ? Sir Ernest Shackleton and two of his companions reach a whaling station to get help for the rest of the crew of Endurance. Britain initiates daylight saving time.
• May 31 – June 1 – Battle of Jutland
• June 5 – Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
• June 5 – HMS Hampshire sinks off the Orkneys, Scotland, with Lord Kitchener aboard
• June 15 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America. [1]

July-August

• July 1 – November 18: More than 1 million soldiers die during The Battle of the Somme including 60,000 soldiers from the British Commonwealth on the first day. The United States is still unwilling to join in the war with Britain, Canada, Australia and the other commonwealth countries.
• July 15 – In Seattle, Washington, William Boeing incorporates Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing).
• July 16 – Hellenic Holocaust: The entire Greek population of Sinope and the coastal region of the county of Kastanome is either exiled or killed.
• July 22 – In San Francisco, California, 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 – 233 dead
• 2 August – World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto.

November-December

• November 13 – Prime Minister of Australia William Morris Hughes is expelled from the Labor Party over his support for conscription.
• November 25 – Friedrich Adler shoots Karl Stürgh, prime minister of Austria
• December 12 – In the Dolomites, an avalanche buries 18,000 Austrian and Italian soldiers.
• 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.
• November – Woodrow Wilson defeats Charles E. Hughes in the U.S. presidential election
• November 5 – Kingdom of Poland proclaimed by joined act of emperors of Germany and Austria.
• November 7 – Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the United States House of Representatives.
• November 18 – World War I: First Battle of the Somme ends – In France, British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle which started on July 1, 1916.
• November 22 – Jack London, American novelist, dies at the age of 40.
• November 30 – Hellenic Holocaust: According to the Austrian consul: "on 26 November Rafet Bey (Turkish Minister of the Interior) told me: "we must finish off the Greeks as we did with the Armenians … on 28 November.""
• December 23 – World War I: Battle of Magdhaba – In the Sinai desert, Australian and New Zealand mounted troops capture the Turkish garrison.

Unknown dates

• Hipolito Irigoyen elected as the President of Argentina.
• Blaise Diagre, first black representative of Senegal in the French parliament
• Cours de linguistique générale by Ferdinand de Saussure is published.
• Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, are cancelled.
• Food is rationed in Germany.
• Ernst Rudin published his initial results on the genetics of schizophrenia.
• The Netherlands is hit by a North Sea storm that floods lowlands and kills 10.000 people.
• Woman's International Bowling Congress established in the US.
• Robert Baden-Powell founds Wolf Scouts in Britain, changed to Cub Scouts in the USA.
• Sopwith Camel aircraft is introduced to combat the German-built Fokker fighter aircraft.

Ongoing events

• World War I (1914-1918)
• Armenian Genocide (1915-1918)
• Hellenic Holocaust (1914-1922)

Births

January-March

• January 3 – Betty Furness, American actress and consumer activist (d. 1994)
• January 12 – Pieter Willem Botha, President of South Africa
• January 22 – Henri Dutilleux, French composer
• February 9 – Tex Hughson, Major League Baseball player (d. 1993)
• February 11 – Bernice Levin Neugarten, social scientist and gerontologist (d. 2001)
• February 11  – Joseph Alioto, Mayor of San Francisco (d. 1998)
• February 14 – Masaki Kobayashi, Japanese film director
• February 26 – Jackie Gleason, American comedian (d. 1987)
• February 29 – Dinah Shore, American singer (d. 1994)
• March 3 – Paul Halmos, Hungarian-born mathematician
• March 4 – Hans Eysenck, German-born psychologist (d. 1997)
• March 11 – Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1995)
• March 13 – John Aspinwall Roosevelt, American businessman and philanthropist (d. 1981)
• March 14 – Horton Foote, American writer
• March 15 – Harry James, American musician and band leader (d. 1983)
• March 17 – Ray Ellington, British singer (d. 1985)
• March 19 – Irving Wallace, American novelist (d. 1990)
• March 29 – Eugene McCarthy, U.S. Senator from Minnesota

April-June

• April 3 – Herb Caen, American journalist (d. 1997)
• April 5 – Gregory Peck, American actor (d. 2003)
• April 11 – Alberto Ginastera, Argentine composer (d. 1983)
• April 12 – Beverly Cleary, American author
• April 15 – Alfred S. Bloomingdale, American department store heir (d. 1982)
• April 15  – Helene Hanff, author (d. 1997)
• April 22 – Yehudi Menuhin, American violinist (d. 1999)
• April 25 – R.J. Rushdoony, American founder of Christian Reconstructionism (d. 2001)
• April 28 – Ferrucio Lamborghini, Italian automobile manufacturer (d. 1993)
• April 30 – Claude Elwood Shannon, American information theorist (d. 2001)
• April 30 – Robert Shaw, American condcutor (d. 1999)
• May 8 – João Havelange, Brazilian industrialist and FIFA president
• May 10 – Milton Babbitt, American composer
• May 11 – Camilo José Cela, Spanish writer (d. 2002)
• May 20 – Trebisonda Valla, Italian athlete
• May 21 – Harold Robbins, American novelist (d. 1997)
• May 21 – Tinus Osendarp, Dutch sprinter (d. 2002)
• May 26 – Henriette Roosenburg, Dutch journalist (d. 1972)
• June 8 – Francis Crick, English molecular biologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2004)
• June 23 – Len Hutton, English cricketer (d. 1990)
• June 23 – Hermann Gmeiner, educator (d. 1986)
• June 23 – Irene Worth, actress (d. 2002)

July-December

• July 11 – Gough Whitlam, twenty-first Prime Minister of Australia
• July 14 – Natalia Ginzburg, author (d. 1991)
• July 22 – Marcel Cerdan, French boxer (d. 1949)
• July 31 – Bill Todman, American game show producer (d. 1979)
• September 13 – Roald Dahl, Welsh author (d. 1990)
• October 19 – Emil Gilels, Ukrainian pianist (d. 1994)
• October 30 – Leon Day, baseball player (d. 1995)
• November 4 – Walter Cronkite, American television journalist
• November 5 – Jim Tabor, baseball player
• November 10 – Louis le Brocquy, Irish painter
• November 24 – Forrest J. Ackerman, American writer
• November 27 – Chick Hearn, American basketball announcer (d. 2002)
• November 28 – Mary Lilian Baels, wife of Leopold III of the Belgians (d. 2002)
• December 9 – Kirk Douglas, American actor
• December 11 – Dámaso Pérez Prado, Cuban musician (d. 1989)
• December 19 – Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, publicist
• Jack Agazarian, English World War II spy (d. 1945)

Deaths

• February 6 – Rubén Darío, Nicaraguan writer (b. 1867)
• February 12 – Richard Dedekind, German mathematician (b. 1831)
• February 28 – Henry James, American writer (b. 1843)
• March 24 – Enrique Granados, Spanish composer (ship sinking) (b. 1867)
• May 3 – Padraig Pearse, Irish nationalist (b. 1879)
• May 11 – Max Reger, German composer (b. 1873)
• May 13 – Sholom Aleichem, Ukrainian Yiddish writer (b. 1859)
• June 6 – Yuan Shikai, Chinese military official and politician (b. 1859)
• June 29 – Georges Lacombe, French artist (b. 1868)
• July 6 – Odilon Redon, French painter (b. 1840)
• July 23 – Sir William Ramsay, Scottish chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1852)
• September 4 – José Echegaray y Eizaguirre, Spanish writer (b. 1832)
• October 7 – James Whitcomb Riley, American poet (b. 1849)
• October 28 – Cleveland Abbe, American meteorologist (b. 1838)
• November 13 – Lanoe Hawker, British fighter pilot (b. 1890)
• November 14 – Saki, British writer (b. 1870)
• November 15 – Henryk Sienkiewicz, Polish author (b. 1846)
• November 22 – Jack London, American author (b. 1876)
• November 24 – Hiram Stevens Maxim, American firearms inventor (b. 1840)
• December 5 – Princess Augusta of Cambridge, last grandchild of King George III of England
• December 28 – Eduard Strauss, Austrian composer (b. 1835)
• December 29/December 30 – Grigori Rasputin, Russian monk and mystic (b. 1869)
• February 19 – Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist and philosopher (b. 1838)

Nobel Prizes

• Physics – not awarded
• Chemistry – not awarded
• Medicine – not awarded
• Literature – Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam
• Peace – not awarded