1915 in the United States

1915 in the United States
Years:	1912 1913 1914 – 1915 – 1916 1917 1918
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Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1865–1918)

Events from the year 1915 in the United States.

President Woodrow Wilson throws out the first pitch at the 1915 World Series.

Incumbents

Federal Government

• President: Woodrow Wilson (D-New Jersey)
• Vice President: Thomas R. Marshall (D-Indiana)
• Chief Justice: Edward Douglass White (Louisiana)
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Champ Clark (D-Missouri)
• Congress: 63rd (until March 4), 64th (starting March 4)

Events

January–March

Souvenir booklet for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition

• January – While working as a cook at New York's Sloan Hospital under an assumed name, Typhoid Mary infects 25 people, and is placed in quarantine for life.
• January 12
  • The Rocky Mountain National Park is established by an act of the U.S. Congress.
  • The United States House of Representatives rejects a proposal to give women the right to vote.
• January 21 – Kiwanis International is founded in Detroit, Michigan.
• January 28 – An act of the U.S. Congress designates the United States Coast Guard, begun in 1790, as a military branch over 19 years.
• February 2 – Vanceboro international bridge bombing
• February 8 – The controversial film, The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith, premieres in Los Angeles.
• February 12 – In Washington, D.C. the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial is put into place.
• February 20 – In San Francisco, California the Panama-Pacific International Exposition is opened.
• March 3 – NACA, the predecessor of NASA, is founded.
• March 25 – The U.S. submarine F-4 sinks off Hawaii; 23 are killed.
• 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.

April–June

Ralph DePalma (1882-1956) wins the 1915 Indianapolis 500 on May 31.

• May 6 – Babe Ruth hits his first career home run off of Jack Warhop.
• May 7 – The RMS Lusitania is sunk on passage from New York to Britain by a German U-boat, killing 1,198.
• May 22 – Lassen Peak, one of the Cascade Volcanoes in Northern 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 between 1900 and the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
• June 9 – U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigns over a disagreement regarding his nation's handling of the Lusitania sinking.
• June 21 – Guinn v. United States is decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, finding grandfather clause exemptions to literacy tests for voters to be unconstitutional.

July–September

• July 24 – The steamer Eastland capsizes in central Chicago, with the loss of 844 lives.
• July 28 – The United States occupation of Haiti begins.
• August 5–August 23 – Hurricane Two of the 1915 Atlantic hurricane season over Galveston and New Orleans leaves 275 dead.
• 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 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.

October–December

• October 19 – Mexican Revolution: The U.S. recognizes the Mexican government of Venustiano Carranza de facto (not de jure until 1917).
• November 18 – Release of 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 27 (Thanksgiving Night) – Second Ku Klux Klan established in Stone Mountain, Georgia by William Joseph Simmons.

Undated

Woodrow Wilson House (Washington, D.C.), built in 1915

• Emory College is rechartered as Emory University, and plans to move its main campus from Oxford, Georgia to Atlanta.
• The first stop sign appears in Detroit, Michigan.
• Colonel Francis G. Ward Pumping Station in Buffalo, New York, the largest in the US at this time, begins operation.
• Woman's Peace Party organized.

Ongoing

• Progressive Era (1890s–1920s)
• Lochner era (c. 1897–c. 1937)
• U.S. occupation of Haiti (1915–1934)

Births

• January 2 – John Hope Franklin, historian (died 2009)
• January 3 – Sid Hudson, baseball player (died 2008)
• January 4 – Meg Mundy, English-born actress (died 2016)
• January 5 – Arthur H. Robinson, geographer and cartographer (died 2004)
• January 6 – Don Edwards, politician (died 2015)
• January 9 – Anita Louise, actress (died 1970)
• January 14 – Mark Goodson, television game show producer (died 1992)
• January 16 – Leslie H. Martinson, television and film director
• January 24 – Robert Motherwell, painter (died 1991)
• January 29 – John Serry, Sr., musician, composer and arranger (died 2003)
• January 31
  • Alan Lomax, folklorist and musicologist (died 2002)
  • Thomas Merton, monk and author (died 1968)
• February 5 – Robert Hofstadter, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1990)
• February 10 – Karl Winsch, baseball player and manager (died 2001)
• February 12 – Richard G. Colbert, admiral (died 1973)
• February 14 – Ray Evans, composer (died 2007)
• February 16 – Jim O'Hora, college football coach (died 2005)
• February 21 – Ann Sheridan film actress (died 1967)
• February 23 – Paul Tibbets, World War II bomber pilot (Enola Gay) (died 2007)
• February 26 – Preacher Roe, baseball player (died 2008)
• February 28 – Zero Mostel, born Samuel Mostel, film and stage actor (died 1977)
• March 29 – Helen Yglesias, novelist (died 2008)
• April 4 – Muddy Waters, born McKinley Morganfield, African-American blues musician (died 1983)
• April 7
  • Stanley Adams, actor (died 1977)
  • Albert O. Hirschman, German-born economist (died 2012)
  • Billie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan, African-American jazz blues singer (died 1959)
• April 16 – Joan Alexander, American actress (died 2009)
• May 1 – Archie Williams, athlete (died 1993)
• May 2 – Doris Fisher, singer and songwriter (died 2003)
• May 5 – Alice Faye, entertainer (died 1998)
• May 6 – Orson Welles, actor and director (died 1985)
• May 8 – Milton Meltzer, author (died 2009)
• May 15 – Paul Samuelson, economist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2009)
• June 10 – Saul Bellow, Canadian-born novelist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2005)
• June 12 – David Rockefeller, banker and philanthropist
• June 15 – Thomas Huckle Weller, virologist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2008)
• July 5 – John Woodruff, athlete (died 2007)
• July 7 – Peter H. Dominick, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1963 to 1975 (died 1981)
• July 15 – Albert Ghiorso, nuclear scientist (died 2010)
• July 17 – Fred Ball, movie studio executive, actor and brother of Lucille Ball (died 2007)
• July 28
  • Charles Townes, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2015)
  • Frankie Yankovic, accordion player (died 1998)
• July 28 – Dick Sprang, comic book artist during the golden age of comics and explorer (died 2000)
• August 4 – William Keene, actor (died 1992)
• August 12 – Michael Kidd, choreographer (died 2007)
• August 14 – Irene Hickson, baseball player (died 1995)
• August 19 – Ring Lardner Jr., film screenwriter (died 2000)
• August 25
  • Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr., physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2011)
  • Walter Trampler, violist (died 1997)
• August 27 – Norman F. Ramsey, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2011)
• August 28
  • Tol Avery, actor (died 1973)
  • Simon Oakland, actor (died 1983)
  • Tasha Tudor, illustrator (died 2008)
• September 23 – Clifford Shull, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2001)
• October 1 – Jerome Bruner, developmental and educational psychologist (died 2016)
• October 4 – Beverly Loraine Greene, African-American architect (died 1957)
• October 6 – Ralph Tyler Smith, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1969 to 1970 (died 1972)
• October 17 – Arthur Miller, playwright and essayist (died 2005)
• November 9 – Sargent Shriver, Peace Corps founder (died 2011)
• November 14 – Billy Bauer, cool jazz guitarist (died 2005)
• November 19 – Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr., physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1974)
• November 26 – Earl Wild, pianist (died 2010)
• November 29 – Billy Strayhorn, composer, pianist and jazz innovator (died 1967)
• November 30 – Brownie McGhee, Piedmont blues musician (died 1996)
• December 12 – Frank Sinatra, singer and actor (died 1998)

Deaths

• January 19 – Abram J. Buckles, soldier and jurist (born 1846)
• February 18 – Frank James, outlaw (born 1843)
• March 5 – Thomas R. Bard, U.S. Senator from California from 1900 until 1905 (born 1841)
• April 16 – Nelson W. Aldrich, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island from 1881 until 1911 (born 1841)
• April 26 – John Bunny, silent film comedian (born 1863)
• May 7 – Sinking of the RMS Lusitania:
  • Justus Miles Forman, writer (born 1875)
  • Charles Frohman, theater producer (born 1856)
  • Elbert Hubbard, writer and philosopher (born 1856)
  • Alice Moore Hubbard, wife of Elbert (born 1861)
  • Charles Klein, playwright (born 1867)
  • Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt I, sportsman (born 1877)
• June 19 – Benjamin F. Isherwood, admiral (born 1822)
• July 16 – Ellen G. White, co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (born 1827)
• August 25 – Henry Overholser, businessman (born 1846)
• September 13 – Andrew L. Harris, Civil War hero and Governor of Ohio (born 1835)
• November 14 – Booker T. Washington, African-American educator (born 1856)
• November 16 – Julius C. Burrows, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1895 until 1911 (born 1837)
• November 21 – Dixie Haygood, magician (born 1861)

See also

• List of American films of 1915

External links

• Media related to 1915 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons
• "1915". Timeline. Digital Public Library of America.