1915 in the United States

Incumbents

Federal Government">Federal government of the United States">Federal Government

• President: Woodrow Wilson
• Vice President: Thomas R. Marshall
• Chief Justice: Edward Douglass White
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Champ Clark
• Congress: 63rd, 64th

  Governors

Lieutenant Governors

Events

January–March

• 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 26 – Rocky Mountain National Park is established.
• 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 USS F-4 submarine 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

• May 6 - Babe Ruth hits his first career home run off of Jack Warhop.
• May 7 - The 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 12 - "The class the stars fell on" graduates from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
• 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.
• June 22 - The Imperial Valley earthquakes shook southeastern Southern California, causing six deaths and financial losses of $900,000. Each shock in this doublet earthquake measured 5.5 and had a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII.

  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 2 - The 6.8 Pleasant Valley earthquake shook north-central Nevada with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X, causing limited damage and pronounced fault scarps along the base of the Tobin Range.
• October 4 - Dinosaur National Monument is established.
• October 19 - Mexican Revolution: The U.S. recognizes the Mexican government of Venustiano Carranza de facto.
• November 18 - Release of Inspiration, the first mainstream movie in which a leading actress appears nude.
• November 23 - The Triangle Film Corporation opens its new motion picture theater in Massillon, Ohio.
• November 27 - Second Ku Klux Klan established in Stone Mountain, Georgia by William Joseph Simmons.

  Undated

• 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.
• Thomas Lyle Williams produces the mascara Maybelline.
• Only year in which all five surviving Marx Brothers appear together on stage.

  Ongoing

• Progressive Era
• Lochner era
• U.S. occupation of Haiti

  Births

• January 2 - John Hope Franklin, historian
• January 3 - Sid Hudson, baseball player
• January 4 - Meg Mundy, English-born actress
• January 5 - Arthur H. Robinson, geographer and cartographer
• January 6 - Don Edwards, politician
• January 9 - Anita Louise, actress
• January 14 - Mark Goodson, television game show producer
• January 16 - Leslie H. Martinson, television and film director
• January 24 - Robert Motherwell, painter
• January 29 - John Serry, Sr., musician, composer and arranger
• January 30 - Ed Keats, admiral
• January 31
• * Alan Lomax, folklorist and musicologist
• * Thomas Merton, monk and author
• February 5 - Robert Hofstadter, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• February 10 - Karl Winsch, baseball player and manager
• February 12
• * Richard G. Colbert, admiral
• * Andrew Goodpaster, general
• February 14 - Ray Evans, composer
• February 16 - Jim O'Hora, college football coach
• February 21 - Ann Sheridan film actress
• February 23 - Paul Tibbets, World War II bomber pilot
• February 26 - Preacher Roe, baseball player
• February 28 - Zero Mostel, born Samuel Mostel, film and stage actor
• March 20 - Marie M. Runyon, political activist
• March 29 - Helen Yglesias, novelist
• April 4 - Muddy Waters, born McKinley Morganfield, African-American blues musician
• April 7
• * Stanley Adams, actor
• * Albert O. Hirschman, German-born economist
• * Billie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan, African-American jazz blues singer
• April 16 - Joan Alexander, American actress
• May 1 - Archie Williams, athlete
• May 2 - Doris Fisher, singer and songwriter
• May 5 - Alice Faye, entertainer
• May 6 - Orson Welles, actor and director
• May 8 - Milton Meltzer, historical writer
• May 15 - Paul Samuelson, economist, Nobel Prize laureate
• May 27 - Herman Wouk, novelist
• June 10 - Saul Bellow, Canadian-born novelist, Nobel Prize laureate
• June 12 - David Rockefeller, banker and philanthropist
• June 15 - Thomas Huckle Weller, virologist, Nobel Prize laureate
• July 5 - John Woodruff, African-American middle-distance runner
• July 7 - Peter H. Dominick, U.S. Senator from Colorado from 1963 to 1975
• July 15 - Albert Ghiorso, nuclear scientist
• July 17 - Fred Ball, movie studio executive, actor and brother of Lucille Ball
• July 28
• * Charles Townes, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• * Frankie Yankovic, accordion player
• July 28 - Dick Sprang, comic book artist during the golden age of comics and explorer
• August 4 - William Keene, actor
• August 12 - Michael Kidd, choreographer
• August 14 - Irene Hickson, baseball player
• August 19 - Ring Lardner Jr., film screenwriter
• August 25
• * Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr., physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• * Walter Trampler, violist
• August 27 - Norman F. Ramsey, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• August 28
• * Tol Avery, actor
• * Simon Oakland, actor
• * Tasha Tudor, illustrator
• September 23 - Clifford Shull, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• October 1 - Jerome Bruner, developmental and educational psychologist
• October 4 - Beverly Loraine Greene, African-American architect
• October 24
• * Letitia Woods Brown, African-American academic historian
• * Bob Kane, author and illustrator
• * Roger Milliken, businessman
• October 6 - Ralph Tyler Smith, U.S. Senator from Illinois from 1969 to 1970
• October 17 - Arthur Miller, playwright and essayist
• November 9 - Sargent Shriver, Peace Corps founder
• November 14 - Billy Bauer, cool jazz guitarist
• November 19 - Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr., physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate
• November 26 - Earl Wild, pianist
• November 29 - Billy Strayhorn, composer, pianist and jazz innovator
• November 30 - Brownie McGhee, Piedmont blues musician
• December 12 - Frank Sinatra, singer and actor

  Deaths

• January 19 - Abram J. Buckles, soldier and jurist
• February 18 - Frank James, outlaw
• March 5 - Thomas R. Bard, U.S. Senator from California from 1900 until 1905
• March 15 - Joseph Ackroyd, member of the New York State Senate
• April 16 - Nelson W. Aldrich, U.S. Senator from Rhode Island from 1881 until 1911
• April 26 - John Bunny, silent film comedian
• May 7 - Sinking of the RMS Lusitania:
• * Justus Miles Forman, writer
• * Charles Frohman, theater producer
• * Elbert Hubbard, writer and philosopher
• * Alice Moore Hubbard, wife of Elbert
• * Charles Klein, playwright
• * Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, sportsman
• June 19 - Benjamin F. Isherwood, admiral
• July 16 - Ellen G. White, co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church
• August 25 - Henry Overholser, businessman
• September 13 - Andrew L. Harris, Civil War hero and Governor of Ohio
• November 14 - Booker T. Washington, African-American educator
• November 16 - Julius C. Burrows, U.S. Senator from Michigan from 1895 until 1911
• November 21 - Dixie Haygood, magician