Also Within This Year in History:
1915
The horrors of modern warfare were on full view in 1915, the second year of World War I. A German U-boat sank the passenger liner Lusitania off Ireland, German zeppelins bombed London, the French developed a fighter plane that could fire precisely timed machine-gun bullets through its propeller, and German troops unleashed poison gas for the first time on the battlefield. In America, meanwhile, a young Boston Red Sox pitcher named Babe Ruth clubbed his first major-league homer.
On January 1, 1915, audiences file into the Loring Opera House at 3745 7th Street in Riverside, California, for a sneak preview of D.W. Griffith’s first full‑length feature film, The…
During World War I, Britain suffers its first casualties from an air attack when two German zeppelins drop bombs on Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn on the eastern coast of…
In the country’s first such action against American shipping interests on the high seas, the captain of a German cruiser orders the destruction of the William P. Frye, an American…
On January 29, 1915, in the Argonne region of France, German lieutenant Erwin Rommel leads his company in the daring capture of four French block‑houses, the structures used on the…
A full two years before Germany’s aggressive naval policy would draw the United States into the war against them, Kaiser Wilhelm announces an important step in the development of that…
On February 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, a landmark film in the history of cinema, premieres at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles. The film was America’s…
After encountering a severe snowstorm on the evening of February 17, 1915, the German zeppelin L‑4 crash‑lands in the North Sea near the Danish coastal town of Varde. The zeppelin,…
Director D.W. Griffith’s controversial Civil War epic The Birth of a Nation opens in New York City on March 3, 1915, a few weeks after its West Coast premiere in…
On March 28, 1915, the first American citizen is killed in the eight‑month‑old European conflict that would become known as the First World War. Leon Thrasher, a 31‑year‑old mining engineer…
On April 22, 1915, German forces shock Allied soldiers along the western front by firing more than 150 tons of lethal chlorine gas against two French colonial divisions at Ypres,…
On April 22, 1915, German forces shock Allied soldiers along the Western Front by firing more than 150 tons of lethal chlorine gas against two French colonial divisions at Ypres…
On April 23, 1915, Rupert Brooke, a young scholar and poet serving as an officer in the British Royal Navy, dies of blood poisoning on a hospital ship anchored off…
On April 25, 1915, a week after Anglo‑French naval attacks on the Dardanelles end in dismal failure, the Allies launch a large‑scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula, the Turkish‑controlled…
On April 26, 1915, after receiving the promise of significant territorial gains, Italy signs the Treaty of London, committing itself to enter World War I on the side of the…
On May 1, 1915 in The Hague, Netherlands, the International Congress of Women adopts its resolutions on peace and women’s suffrage. The congress, also referred to as the Women’s Peace…
On the afternoon of May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed without warning by a German submarine off the south coast of Ireland. Within 20 minutes, the…
On May 9, 1915, Anglo‑French forces fighting in World War I launch their first combined attempt to break through the heavily fortified German trench lines on the Western Front in…
“Since leaving Paris yesterday we have passed through streets and streets of such murdered houses, through town after town spread out in its last writhings,” the celebrated novelist Edith Wharton…
On May 23, 1915, Italy declares war on Austria‑Hungary, entering World War I on the side of the Allies—Britain, France and Russia. When World War I broke out in the…
On June 3, 1915, Austro‑Hungarian and German troops recapture Przemysl fortress (now in Poland), from Russian forces. The citadel guarding the northeastern‑most point of the Austro‑Hungarian Empire had been held…
