The Central Powers took Debar, Serbia, ending the Kosovo Offensive and effectively eliminating the Serbian army
The original war aim, now hopelessly lost, was achieved.
The Pan American International Exposition closed.
Last edition:
Showing posts with label 1915. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1915. Show all posts
Thursday, December 4, 2025
Wednesday, December 3, 2025
Friday, December 3, 1915. Mexican border situation serious.
The Casper paper termed the situation on the border "serious".
The retreating British Indian Army arrived at Kut, Iraq.
The British reinforced Matruh, Egypt, to guard against the Senussis.
Last edition:
Thursday, December 2, 1915. A Villa massacre.
Tuesday, December 2, 2025
Thursday, December 2, 1915. A Villa massacre.
Pancho Villa ordered a mass execution of the male residents of San Pedro de la Cueva, blaming the town for the deaths of five of his troops, He originally was going to have everyone in the small town executed, but an officer in his forces convinced him to spare the women and children. Villa personally shot the village priest who urged Villa to spare the town.
The village was principally an Indian one, although a few foreigners and a few Chinese residents were amongst the victims. Seven men survived having been left for dead.
The press reported that Villa lost support of his Yaquis, and that Carranza had ended military control of the railroads.
Last edition:
Tuesday, November 30, 1915. Carranza on the International Bridge.
Labels: 1910s, 1915, Arizona (Flagstaff), Canadian Army, cavalry, Mexico, Personalities, Texas (Brownsville), United States, Venustiano Carranza, Weapons, Woodrow Wilson, World War One
Sunday, November 30, 2025
Tuesday, November 30, 1915. Carranza on the International Bridge.
Venustiano Carranza met Col. Augustus P. Blocksom on the International Bridge between Matamoros and Brownsville. People were smiling, but all was not well.
Blocksom had been in the Army since 1877. He was a cavalryman and would rise to the rank of Maj. General during World War One, although he would serve in the Great War as a training officer, completing his service as the commander of the Army in the Pacific. His career had been very distinguished. He retired in 1918, and died in 1931 at age 76.
Blocksom i n1918, with the stress of the war, even stateside, very clearly showing on him.
Woodrow Wilson created the Walnut Canyon National Monument near Flagstaff, Arizona.
And for the last day of November:
Last edition:
Sunday, November 28, 1915. Going after Zapata.
Friday, November 28, 2025
Sunday, November 28, 1915. Going after Zapata.
The Constitutionalist government in Mexico City announced a plan to bring about victory over Zapata.
Last edition:
Saturday, November 27, 1915. Casper's Fr. McGee passes.
Thursday, November 27, 2025
Saturday, November 27, 1915. Casper's Fr. McGee passes.
It was a Saturday.
An illustration by James Montgomery Flagg graced the cover of the comedic Judge, making sport of November weather, and sports.
The Saturday Evening Post just went with an illustration of contemporary beauty.
.webp)
Country Gentleman had an illustration of a white turkey, but I can't find a good image of it to post.
The British government introduced legislation to restrict housing rents to their pre Great War levels following Glasgow rent strikes.
A second KKK chapter was established in Stone Mountain, Georgia, showing the rapid growth of the racist organization. Of note, a newspaper in Colorado that was black owned and operated campaigned on this day for keeping Birth of a Nation out of Colorado.
In Casper, a tragedy struck the local Catholic community with the death of Fr. McGee, who was just 27 years old.
The local paper also reported that troops were headed to the border in light of the Second Battle of Nogales having just occured.
A rather grim photograph was taken of French soldiers gathering up battlefield dead, French and German.
Weather at Gallipoli continued to be bad.
The Great Blizzard at Gallipoli
Last edition:
Friday, November 26, 1915. Battle of Nogales.
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Friday, November 26, 1915. Battle of Nogales.
Villista's commenced firing on U.S. troops across the border in Nogales, Arizona, from Nogales, Sonora. The 12th Infantry responded with counter fire in an engagement that lasted over two hours until Constitutionalistas troops arrived and attacked the Villistas.
The attack followed a series of cross border raids by unknown, but probably Villistas, forces. The day prior Mascarena's Ranch had bee raided in such an event.
Villa's troops had been attempting to withdraw from Nogales but had their efforts frustrated with Obregon's troops captured a troop train they were using. The Villista firing into Nogales started after that. Some U.S. forces crossed into Mexico during the fight, prior ro the arrival of Obregon's troops. Later in the day, the 10th Cavalry engaged in a 30 minute firefight with the Constitutionalistas.
Bad weather set in at Gallipoli, adding to the misery and to Allied casualties.
Other news of the day:
Martin Mine, Benton, Wis., November 25, 1915.
Cleveland Mine, Hazel Green, Wis, November 26, 1915.
Last edition:
Thursday, November 25, 1915. Retreat of the Serbs and General Relativity.
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Thursday, November 25, 1915. Retreat of the Serbs and General Relativity.
It was Thanksgiving Day in the U.S.
It apparently was a tense one on the the border.
Serbian Field Marshal Radomir Putnik ordered a retreat of Serbian forces military through Albania and Montenegro. 155,000 Serbian soldiers and civilians to escape to the Adriatic Sea, but an estimated 200,000 more died of exposure, starvation and attacks by enemy soldiers and local Albanian militia.
Parliament passed an act to restrict rent and mortgage rate increases during the ongoing war.
Albert Einstein submitted his paper 'The Field Equations of Gravitation' for publication in 1915, which gave the correct field equations for the theory of general relativity. German mathematician David Hilbert had submitted an article containing the correct field equations for general relativity five days before.
Last edition:
Wednesday, November 24, 1915. Withdrawals at Ctesiphon.
Labels: 1910s, 1915, 1920s, 1922, 1925, Battle of Ctesiphon, British Army, Bulgarian Army, Kosovo Offensive, Ku Klux Klan, Movies, Ottoman Army, Personalities, Racism
Monday, November 24, 2025
Wednesday, November 24, 1915. Withdrawals at Ctesiphon.
Both sides withdrew in the Battle of Ctesiphon.
Pristina fell to the Bulgarians.
William Joseph Simmons, inspired Birth of a Nation, founded the second variant of the Ku Klux Klan at Stone Mountain, Georgia. The event included the burning of a cross, something the original Klan did not do, but which the film had depicted.
Simmons would run the organization until 1922, at which point he'd be removed from power The organization reached its peak membership in 1925, and declined thereafter due to scandal.
Last edition:
Tuesday, November 23, 1915. Turned back at Ctesiphon.
Sunday, November 23, 2025
Tuesday, November 23, 1915. Turned back at Ctesiphon.
British forces failed to break through Ottoman lines at Ctesiphon.
Sikh troops were deployed by the British to Matruah in response to Senussi attacks.
German and Bulgarian troops in the battle for Pristina on November 23, 1915.
Last edition:
Monday, November 22, 1915. British turned back in Mesopotamia.
Saturday, November 22, 2025
Monday, November 22, 1915. British turned back in Mesopotamia.
The Indian Expeditionary Force D, mostly made up of Indian units and under the command of Gen. Sir John Nixon, attacked a more powerful force of Ottoman troops under the command of Nureddin Pasha near the site of the ancient city of Ctesiphon, located on the Tigris southeast of Baghdad.
Both sides took high casualty rates, but the battle arrested British progress in Mesopotamia and forced a British withdrawal.
The French evacuated the Vardar region of Macedonia in light of the defeat of the Serbian Army.
While the fighting in Europe had much of the front news attention in the US, in Texas it was Villa's plight south of the border, and how that might spill into the US.
Larrabee State Park was created in Washington.
The circus/carnival train owned by Con T. Kennedy was hit head on by the engine of a Central of Georgia passenger train east of Columbus, Georgia. The resulting crash resulted in at least 15 deaths of circus workers and perhaps up to 25, who were buried in a common grave.
Last edition:
Sunday, November 20, 1915. Villa in retreat. . . again.
Friday, November 21, 2025
Sunday, November 20, 1915. Villa in retreat. . . again.
Putting up a post that was made, and then lost;
Villa was in retreat again:
From this point on, Villa would, in fact, always be in retreat.
Supreme Leader of the Senussi in North Africa Ahmed Sharif as-Senussi ordered his forces to cross the Egyptian frontier to execute a military coastal campaign against the Allies.
An outpost southeast of Sollum, Egypt was attacked
The Endurance broke up and sank. The Aurora drifted across the Antartic Circle as ice trapping her began to melt.
Last edition:
Friday, November 19, 1915. Joe Hill executed.
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Friday, November 19, 1915. Joe Hill executed.
Trade Union leader and member of the IWW was executed for the murder of John and Arling Morrison in Salt Lake City in 1914. His guilt continues to be contested, and Hill became sort of a martyr for trade union activism.
Hill was a Swede born as Joel Emmanuel Hägglund in an era when a lot of Scandinavian and Eastern European immigrants were fairly radicalized.
Hill may in fact have not been guilty of the murder he was accused of. Morrison, a former policeman and grocer, along with his son, was shot and killed by two men. Later that evening Hill arrived at a doctor's office with a gunshot wound and claimed it was sustained in a fight over a women. He refused to say more, even later. Evidence developed as late as 2011 suggest that Hill was telling the truth initially, and that he was shot by Otto Appelquist, a friend of his. Both Appelquist and Hill were lodgers of the Erickson family, and rivals for her attentions. Hill apparently told Erickson that Appelquist had shot him before going to seek medical attention, but he never revealed the details for his defense at trial, which is peculiar.
Hill, who was a songwriter himself, was famously memorialized in the balled "Joe Hill".
It's a bit much, frankly, particularly if he was shot by a fellow Swede over the affection of a Swedish American girl. That's drama, but not that sort of drama.
It's interesting that he never revealed the details of what would have been a pretty good alibi. Given the immigrant connection, he may have felt that he simply didn't want to get them in trouble.
Richard Bell Davies of the Royal Naval Air Service landed his Nieuport to rescue downed airman Gilbert Smylie in the first example of an air combat rescue mission.
He won the Victoria Cross.
The KING has been graciously pleased to approve of the grant of the Victoria Cross to Squadron-Commander Richard Bell Davies, D.S.O., R.N., and of the Distinguished Service Cross to Flight Sub-Lieutenant Gilbert Formby Smylie, R.N., in recognition of their behaviour in the following circumstances:—
On the 19th November these two officers carried out an air attack on Ferrijik Junction. Flight Sub-Lieutenant Smylie's machine was received by very heavy fire and brought down. The pilot planed down over the station, releasing all his bombs except one, which failed to drop, simultaneously at the station from a very low altitude. Thence he continued his descent into the marsh. On alighting he saw the one unexploded bomb, and set fire to his machine, knowing that the bomb would ensure its destruction. He then proceeded towards Turkish territory.
At this moment he perceived Squadron-Commander Davies descending, and fearing that he would come down near the burning machine and thus risk destruction from the bomb, Flight Sub-Lieutenant Smylie ran back and from a short distance exploded the bomb by means of a pistol bullet. Squadron-Commander Davies descended at a safe distance from the burning machine, took up Sub-Lieutenant Smylie, in spite of the near approach of a party of the enemy, and returned to the aerodrome, a feat of airmanship that can seldom have been equalled for skill and gallantry.
He'd earlier won the DSO.
For services rendered in the aerial attack on Dunkirk, 23rd January, 1915:—
Squadron Commander Richard Bell Davies
Flight Lieutenant Richard Edmund Charles Peirse
These Officers have repeatedly attacked the German submarine station at Ostend and Zeebrugge, being subjected on each occasion to heavy and accurate fire, their machines being frequently hit. In particular, on 23rd January, they each discharged eight bombs in an attack upon submarines alongside the mole at Zeebrugge, flying down to close range. At the outset of this flight Lieutenant Davies was severely wounded by a bullet in the thigh, but nevertheless he accomplished his task, handling his machine for an hour with great skill in spite of pain and loss of blood.
He remained in the Royal Navy until retiring in 1941, at which time he joined the Royal Navy Reserve, taking a reduction in rank to Commander from Vice Admiral in order to do so. He retied a second time in 1944. He died in 1966 at age 79.
Last edition:
Wednesday, November 17, 1915. Fighting in Haiti and Egypt.
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