1916

Events from the year 1916 in the United States.
==Incumbents==
===Federal Government===
* President: Woodrow Wilson (D-NJ)
* Vice President: Thomas R. Marshall (D-IN)
* Chief Justice: Edward Douglass White (LA)
* Speaker of the House of Representatives: Champ Clark (D-MO)
* Congress: 64th
==Events==
===January===
* January 1 – The Journal of Negro History is founded by Carter G. Woodson, the father of "Black History" and "Negro History Week".
* January 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.
** Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad: The Supreme Court of the United States upholds the national income tax.
* January 31 – The Anti-Militarism Committee changes its name to the Anti-Preparedness Committee, later in the year becoming the American Union Against Militarism.
===February===
* February 11
** Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control.
** The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presents its first concert.
===March===
* March 3 – The Original Dixieland Jazz Band begin playing at Schiller's Cafe in Chicago. Until June 5 it is known as Stein's Dixie Jazz Band.
* March 6 – Newton D. Baker appointed Secretary of War.
* March 8 – Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa leads about 500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico, killing 12 U.S. soldiers. A garrison of the U.S. 13th Cavalry Regiment fights back and drives them away.
* March 15 – President Woodrow Wilson sends 12,000 United States troops over the U.S.-Mexico border to pursue Pancho Villa; the 13th Cavalry regiment enters Mexican territory.
* March 16
** Mexican Revolution: The U.S. 7th and 10th Cavalry regiments under John J. Pershing cross the border to join the hunt for Villa.
** Mexican Revolution: United States Army aircraft fly their first mission over foreign soil when Curtiss JN-3s of the 1st Aero Squadron carry out reconnaissance over Mexico.
===April===
* April 20
** The Escadrille Américaine ("American Squadron"), later to be known as the Lafayette Escadrille ("Lafayette Squadron"), is established as an American volunteer unit of the French Air Force. Their first aerial victory is claimed on May 18 by Kiffin Rockwell.
** The Chicago Cubs play their first game at Weeghman Park (modern-day Wrigley Field), defeating the Cincinnati Reds 7–6 in 11 innings.
===May===
* May 5 – United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1916–24) begins when companies of the United States Marine Corps land in the Dominican Republic.
* May 15 – Lynching of Jesse Washington: Jesse Washington, a black farmhand, is brutally lynched in Robinson, Texas by a crowd of white people, for allegedly murdering his employers' wife.
* May 19 – Norman Rockwell's first cover for The Saturday Evening Post, Boy with Baby Carriage.
* May 22 – The case of United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola is decided.
===June===
* June 3 – Division of Militia Affairs renamed Militia Bureau.
* June 5 – Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
* June 15 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America. This year also, Robert Baden-Powell founds the Wolf Cubs in Britain, changed to Cub Scouts in the U.S.
===July===
* July 1
** The United States Marine Corps take control of Santo Domingo.
** At least one shark mauls five swimmers along 80 miles (130 km) of New Jersey coastline during the Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 begins, resulting in four deaths and the survival of one youth who required limb amputation. This event is the inspiration for author Peter Benchley, over half a century later, to write Jaws.
* July 8 – Massive flooding caused by two hurricanes devastates western North Carolina.
* July 12 – Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 ends.
* July 15 – In Seattle, Washington, William Boeing incorporates Pacific Aero Products (later renamed The Boeing Company).
* July 22 – In San Francisco, California, a bomb explodes on Market Street during a Preparedness Day parade, killing 10 and injuring 40. Warren Billings and Tom Mooney would later be wrongfully convicted of the bombing.
* July 30 – German agents cause the Black Tom explosion in Jersey City, New Jersey, an act of sabotage destroying an ammunition depot and killing at least seven people.
===August===
* August 1 – Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park is established in Hawaii
* August 9 – Lassen Volcanic National Park is established in California.
* August 24 – Council of National Defense formed.
* August 25 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs legislation creating the National Park Service.
* August 29 – The United States passes the Philippine Autonomy Act.
===September===
* September 1 – The Keating–Owen Act, the first federal law to restrict child labor, is passed, but is ruled unconstitutional in 1918.
* September 5 – Release of D. W. Griffith's film Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages.
* September 6 – The first true self-service grocery store, Piggly Wiggly, is founded in Memphis, Tennessee, by Clarence Saunders (opening 5 days later).
* September 7 – The Merchant Marine Act of 1916 establishes the U.S. Shipping Board (inaugurated January 1917).
* September 13 – Mary, a circus elephant, is hanged in the town of Erwin, Tennessee for killing her handler, Walter "Red" Eldridge.
* September 30 – Construction is completed on the Hell Gate Bridge in New York City.
===October===
* October 2 – The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers is founded as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers.
* October 16 – Margaret Sanger opens a family planning and birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the U.S., a forerunner of Planned Parenthood. Nine days later, she is arrested for breaking a New York state law prohibiting distribution of contraceptives. This same year, she publishes What Every Girl Should Know, providing information about such topics as menstruation and sexuality in adolescents.
===November===
* November 1 – The first 40-hour work week officially begins in the Endicott-Johnson factories of Western New York.
* November 5 – Everett massacre: An armed confrontation in Everett, Washington, between local authorities and members of the Industrial Workers of the World results in seven deaths.
* November 7
** U.S. presidential election, 1916: Democratic President Woodrow Wilson narrowly defeats Republican Charles Evans Hughes.
** Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the United States House of Representatives.
* November 19 – Ruth Law sets a new distance record for cross-country flight by flying 590 miles (950 km) non-stop from Chicago to state of New York. She flies on to New York City the next day.
* November 21 – The U.S. rejects a German offer of £10000 per American lost in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.
===December===
* December 1 – Wilbur Sweatman records his hot ragtime for Emerson Records in New York City.
* December 5 – "Petticoat Revolution" in Umatilla, Oregon: 7 women successfully capture the mayorship and a majority of council seats.
* December 31
** The Hampton Terrace Hotel in North Augusta, South Carolina, one of the largest and most luxurious hotels in the nation at this time, burns to the ground.
** 14 journals have published Louis Raemaekers's anti-German cartoons.
==Memoriam==
* January 1 – Alfred W. Benson, U.S. Senator from Kansas from 1906 to 1907 (aged 72; Topeka, KS, USA)
* January 6 – Archibald M. Howe, lawyer and historian (aged 67; MA, USA)
* January 9 – Ada Rehan, Shakespearean actress (aged 58; New York City, NY, USA)
* January 16 – Charles A. Zimmermann, band composer (aged 55; Annapolis, MD, USA)
* January 17
** Jeannette Leonard Gilder, author and editor (aged 66; New York City, NY, USA)
** Arthur V. Johnson, silent movie actor and director, of tuberculosis (aged 39; Philadelphia, PA, USA)
* February 3 – Bowman Brown Law, politician (aged 60; Ottawa, ON, Canada)
* February 12 – John Townsend Trowbridge, author (aged 88; Arlington, MA, USA)
* February 28 – Henry James, naturalized English novelist (aged 72; London, England, UK)
* March 11 – Henry Gassaway Davis, U.S. Senator from West Virginia from 1871 to 1883 (aged 92; Washington, DC, USA)
* March 14 – Benjamin F. Shively, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1909 to 1916 (aged 58; Washington, DC, USA)
* March 20
** Ota Benga, pygmy, suicide (aged 33; Lynchburg, VA, USA)
** Stephen Wallace Dorsey, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1873 to 1879 (aged 74; Los Angeles, CA, USA)
* March 25 – Ishi, last known member of the Yana people (aged 56; San Francisco, CA, USA)
* April 11 – Richard Harding Davis, journalist and author (aged 51; New York City, NY, USA)
* April 15 – Joanna P. Moore, Baptist missionary and educator (aged 83; Selma, AL, USA)
* April 19 – Ephraim Shay, inventor (aged 76; Harbor Springs, MI, USA)
* April 21 – John Surratt, suspected of involvement in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, son of Mary Surratt (aged 72; Baltimore, MD, USA)
* May 12 – Fred T. Perris, railroad civil engineer (aged 79; San Bernardino, CA, USA)
* May 13
** Clara Louise Kellogg, operatic soprano (aged 73; New Hartford, CT, USA)
** Sholem Aleichem, Yiddish writer (aged 57; New York City, NY, USA)
* May 29 – James J. Hill, financier (aged 77; St. Paul, MN, USA)
* May 30 – John S. Mosby, Confederate army cavalry battalion commander in the American Civil War (aged 82; Washington, DC, USA)
* June 9
** John R. McLean, owner and publisher (aged 67; Cincinnati, OH, USA)
** Richard C. Saufley, naval aviation pioneer, killed in aviation accident (aged 31; Santa Rosa Island, FL, USA)
* June 22 – Oliver Ernesto Branch, politician (aged 68; Manchester, NH, USA)
* June 24 – Victor Chapman, fighter pilot in the French Air Force, killed in action (aged 26; Douaumont, France)
* June 25 – Thomas Eakins, realist painter (aged 71; Philadelphia, PA, USA)
* June 26 – Addison Hutton, architect (aged 81; Upper Darby, PA, USA)
* July 3 – Hetty Green, financier and miser (aged 81; New York City, NY, USA)
* July 4 – Alan Seeger, poet, killed in action (aged 28; Belloy-en-Santerre, France)
* July 22 – James Whitcomb Riley, poet (aged 66; Indianapolis, IN, USA)
* July 23 – Thomas M. Patterson, newspaper publisher and U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1901 to 1907 (aged 76; Denver, CO, USA)
* August 31
** Martha McClellan Brown, temperance activist (aged 78; Dayton, OH, USA)
** John St. John, 8th Governor of Kansas from 1879 to 1883 (aged 83; Olathe, KS, USA)
* September 8 – James Gray, journalist and 19th Mayor of Minneapolis (aged 54; Minneapolis, MN, USA)
* September 9 – Sydney Ayres, silent film actor (aged 37; Oakland, CA, USA)
* September 29 – James H. Southgate, spokesman for prohibition (aged 57; Durham, NC, USA)
* October 1 – James Paul Clarke, 18th Governor of Arkansas from 1895 to 1897 and U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1903 to 1916 (aged 62; Little Rock, AR, USA)
* October 12 – Tony Jannus, aviator and aircraft designer, killed in aviation accident in Russia (aged 27; Black Sea, Russia)
* October 25 – William Merritt Chase, Impressionist painter (aged 66; New York City, NY, USA)
* October 28 – Cleveland Abbe, meteorologist (aged 77; Chevy Chase, MD, USA)
* October 29 – John Sebastian Little, politician and congressman (aged 65; Little Rock, AR, USA)
* October 31 – Charles Taze Russell, Protestant evangelist, forerunner of Jehovah's Witnesses (aged 64; Pampa, TX, USA)
* November 4 – James D. Moffat, 3rd president of Washington & Jefferson College (aged 70; Washington, PA, USA)
* November 10 – Walter Sutton, geneticist and surgeon (aged 39; Kansas City, KS, USA)
* November 13 – Percival Lowell, astronomer (aged 61; Flagstaff, AZ, USA)
* November 14
** Henry George Jr., politician (aged 54; Washington, DC, USA)
** Franklin Ware Mann, inventor (aged 60; Milford, MA, USA)
* November 15 – Molly Elliot Seawell, novelist (aged 56; Washington, DC, USA)
* November 22
** Ida Dixon, socialite and golf course architect (aged 61; Wallingford, PA, USA)
** Jack London, writer (aged 40; Glen Ellen, CA, USA)
* November 24 – Sir Hiram Maxim, firearms inventor (aged 76; London, England, UK)
* November 26 – Charlie Case, vaudeville entertainer (aged 58; New York City, NY, USA)
* December 8 – John Porter Merrell, admiral (aged 70; New London, CT, USA)
* December 20 – William Gilchrist, composer (aged 70; Easton, PA, USA)
* December 31 – Alice Ball, African-American chemist (aged 24; Seattle, WA, USA)
==External links==
* 1916 in the United States
Category:United States History: Volume 14