The Germans used poison gas in warfare for the first time, firing shells loaded with xylyl bromide, tear gas, against the Russians at the Battle of Bolimów.
Cold weather prevented it from being effective.
The day saw huge casualties as the German attacks failed, and the Russians countered, which also failed.
The British, alerted to the presence of the Ottomans, prepared defenses for the canal.
Thomas Merton OCSO, whom I frankly have mixed feelings about, was born in France on this day.
The Ottomans took the main coastal road between Qantara at the Suez Canal and El Arish that bordered Ottoman Palestine.
The US barque William P. Frye was detaomed by the German cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich off of the coast of Brazil. She was carrying 189,950 US bushels (1,768,300 US gal) of wheat, bound for Queenstown, Falmouth, or Plymouth in the United Kingdom.
The Germans scuttled her the following day after the captain refused to thrown the cargo overboard. The crew and passengers, including women and children, were released when the German ship put in at Newport News on March 11 due to engine trouble, at which time the US learned of the event, sparking outrage.
She was the first US ship sunk during World War One.
Lightly armed rebels following John Chilembwe were defeated by the Kings African Rifles.
The Ottomans advanced on Qantara on the Sinai.
Alexander Graham Bell, in New York City, called Thomas A. Watson, in San Francisco, in the first US long distance telephone call.
The German Navy sustained its first Zeppelin loss when an ice up airship went down over the Baltic after bombing Libau, Russia. The Imperial Russian Navy captured the crew.
The United States Supreme Court determined a pardon is only valid if the person it is the subject of accepts it.
The Royal Navy defeated the Imperial German Navy's Kaiserliche Marine in the North Sea, sinking the German armoured cruiser SMS Blücher with a loss of 792 sailors and disabling the German battleshp SMS Seyditz, with a loss of 159 men, in the Battle of Dogger Bank.
People like to claim that the German and British fleets basically did nothing during the Great War as to surface actions outside of the Battle of Jutland, but it simply isn't true. The Battle of Dogger Bank was a major action in which the Royal Navy bested the Germans.
The SMS Blücher sinking.
More realistically, the Germans were simply bested by the British routinely until prudence demanded that it stay in safe harbors as to surface vessels.
The Germans, it might be noted, used Zeppelins in the battle, but without much effect.
Rebel leader and Baptist minister John Chilembwe split up his forces, sending one group to the towns of Blantyre and Limbe in hopes of capturing weapons from stores owned by the African Lakes Company. The other group went to a plantation owned by the A. L. Bruce Estates, also for weapons.
On the same day, Chilembwe requested German aid, a naive assumption about German goals in the war.
French troops on Hartmannswillerkopf summit in Alsace surrendered while Allies cut off food and water to German defenders on Mora mountain in German Cameroon.
A train from Guadalajara, Mexico derailed and plunged into a canyon, killing resulting in the deaths of over 600 passengers.
Oddly enough, on the same day this train carrying Carranza's troops was photographed.
Congress passed the Coast Guard Act, which established the United States Coast Guard by merging United States Life-Saving Service and the United States Revenue Cutter Service. Overall, the Coast Guard would come to absorb a large number of small maritime services.
It was modeled on the Navy, but part of the Department of the Treasury. The 1790 date in its seal is the date the United States Revenue Marine Service had been established.
For years it was part of the Department of the Treasury during peacetime, but as wars have become smaller its oddly been the case that the country thought it needed more than than the two original armed services. There are now a total of six, of which the Coast Guard is one. It's been transferred from the Treasury, where it really should have remained, to the Department of Homeland Security.
Bring back the War Department.
President Wilson established the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge in the State of Washington.
Ottoman stragglers were rounded up by the Russians at Sarikamish.
The Arab houses of Āl Rashīd and Āl Saʻūd fought the Battle of Jarrab north of Al Majma'ah. Āl Rashīd prevailed. Pre war civil servant and wartime British military advisor William Shakespear, a close friend of Ibn Saud, was killed, resulting in diminished British influence over the House of Saud.
African American radical Lucy Parsons led an unemployed march of 10,000 workers in Chicago. The event would result in a program for the unemployed.
While the rest of the world was fighting tooth and nail with each other, the Ross Sea Party established a shore base at Cape Evans, Antarctica, in support of the Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition.
Greek King Constantine created the Order of George, named after his father, in honor of Greek citizens who had given exceptional public service to Greece. In 1973 it was succeeded by the Order of Honour.
Sailors waving from the crow’s nest of the Wyoming class battleship USS Arkansas (BB-33)., January 16, 1915.
The British War Council approved plans to open a new front by landing Allied troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula.
The blame for what would ultimately prove to be an Allied disaster is often placed at Churchill's feet, but in fact the concept was first suggested by an aging Royal Navy commander who was suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's.
There's a lesson in there.
The French submarine Saphir was sunk with the loss of 27 of her crew.
The submarines Saphir and Curie, fallen gloriously in battle, are brought to the agenda of the Naval Army. In his affliction of having seen succumb such valiant servants of the country, the commander-in-chief reminds everyone how proud the army should be to have in its ranks officers and crews capable of heroic actions such as those that were accomplished by these valourous ships whose names will remain in maritime legends. Honour and glory to the officers and crews of the Saphir and Curie, they have truly earned it from the Fatherland.
Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère, admiral of the French navy.
British Home Secretary Herbert Samuel proposed British support for Zionism and a Jewish state in Palestine, in The Future of Palestine.
FWIW, Samuel was himself Jewish and perhaps sympathetic to his coreligious, who endured terrible oppression in some quarters of Europe. Of course, that was going to get worse in the future.
Norwegian feminist Katti Anker Møller delivered a lecture in Oslo on reproductive rights and decriminalizing in the womb infanticide in Norway.
Labor activist Ralph Chaplin completed the trade union anthem "Solidarity Forever".
When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,
But the union makes us strong.
Chorus:
Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
Solidarity forever!
For the union makes us strong.
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong.
Chorus
It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;
Now we stand outcast and starving ’midst the wonders we have made;
But the union makes us strong.
Chorus
All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.
We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.
It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.
While the union makes us strong.
Chorus
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong.
Chorus
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies, multiplied a thousand-fold.
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
The House of representatives rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote, by a vote of 204-174.
How things sat in 1915. Interesting how, in those days, Wyoming was at the forefront of "progressive" politics.
On the same day, this editorial and cartoon ran.
This is, of course, as settled issue today, but surprisingly, with the rise of the extreme right in the US, there have been a couple of fringe figures suggest that letting women vote was a mistake, generally as part of the really misogynistic "Red Pill" movement. This is, I'd note, a fringe element, but its interesting how in the spoiled milk politics of today, and with the rampaging Internet playground, its actually possible for somebody holding that view to get a voice, and for some to actually express adherence to it.
Carlos Meléndez became president of El Salvador by acclamation as nobody else ran.