1916 is a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar)

Events

January-February

• January 1 -The first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled. Impressionist Monet paints 'Water Lilies '.
• January 8 - Allied forces withdraw from Gallipoli
• January 17 - The Professional Golfers Association (PGA) is formed
• January 18 - A 611 gram chondrite type meteorite struck a house near Baxter , Stone County, Missouri.
• January 23 to 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.
• January 24 - In Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad the Supreme Court of the United States declares the federal income tax void
• January 28 - Louis D. Brandeis becomes the first Jew appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States.
• January 29 - World War I: Paris is bombed by German zeppelins for the first time.
• February 2 - Blizzard in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
• February 3 - Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Canada are burned down.
• February 11 - Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control.
• February 11 - Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presents its 1st concert
• February 21 - World War I: In France the Battle of Verdun begins.

March-June

• March 1 - Liberal British Columbia Premier Harlan Carey Brewster term in office ends
• March 6 - Sydney conservatorium of music in Australia accepts first students
• March 9 - Pancho Villa leads 1,500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17.
• March 15 - President Woodrow Wilson sends 12,000 United States troops over the Mexican border to pursue Pancho Villa.
• March 19 - First United States air combat mission in history as eight US planes take off in pursuit of Pancho Villa
• March 22 - Marriage of Edith Bratt and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. They would serve as the inspiration for the fictional characters Lúthien and Beren.
• April 24 - April 30 - Easter Rising in Ireland
• May 20 - The Saturday Evening Post publishes its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting ("Boy with Baby Carriage").
• May 21 ? Sir Ernest Shackleton and two of his companions reach a whaling station to get help for the rest of the crew of Endurance. Britain initiates daylight saving time.
• May 31 - June 1 - Battle of Jutland
• June 5 - Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
• June 5 - HMS Hampshire sinks off the Orkneys, Scotland, with Lord Kitchener aboard
• June 15 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America. [1]

July-August

• July 1 - November 18: More than 1 million soldiers die during The Battle of the Somme including 60,000 soldiers from the British Commonwealth on the first day. The United States is still unwilling to join in the war with Britain, Canada, Australia and the other commonwealth countries.
• July 15 - In Seattle, Washington, William Boeing incorporates Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing).
• July 16 - Hellenic Holocaust: The entire Greek population of Sinope and the coastal region of the county of Kastanome is either exiled or killed.
• July 22 - In San Francisco, California, a bomb explodes on Market Street during a Preparedness Day parade killing 10 injuring 40. (Warren Billings and Tom Mooney are later wrongly convicted of it)
• July 29 - In Ontario, Canada, a lightning strike ignites a forest fire that destroys the towns of Cochrane and Matheson - 233 dead
• 2 August - World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto.

November-December

• November 13 - Prime Minister of Australia William Morris Hughes is expelled from the Labor Party over his support for conscription.
• November 25 - Friedrich Adler shoots Karl Stürgh , prime minister of Austria
• December 12 - In the Dolomites, an avalanche buries 18,000 Austrian and Italian soldiers.
• December 31 - The Hampton Terrace Hotel in North Augusta, South Carolina, one of the largest and most luxurious hotels in the nation at the time, burns to the ground.
• November - Woodrow Wilson defeats Charles E. Hughes in the U.S. presidential election
• November 5 - Kingdom of Poland proclaimed by joined act of emperors of Germany and Austria.
• November 7 - Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the United States House of Representatives.
• November 18 - World War I: First Battle of the Somme ends - In France, British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle which started on July 1, 1916.
• November 22 - Jack London, American novelist, dies at the age of 40.
• November 30 - Hellenic Holocaust: According to the Austrian consul: "on 26 November Rafet Bey (Turkish Minister of the Interior) told me: "we must finish off the Greeks as we did with the Armenians … on 28 November.""
• December 23 - World War I: Battle of Magdhaba - In the Sinai desert, Australian and New Zealand mounted troops capture the Turkish garrison.

unknown dates

• Woman's International Bowling Congress established in the US.
• Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, are cancelled.
• Cours de linguistique générale by Ferdinand de Saussure published
• Robert Baden-Powell founds Wolf Scouts in Britain, changed to Cub Scouts in the USA.
• Food rationed in Germany
• Sopwith Camel aircraft is introduced to combat the German-built Fokker fighter aircraft.
• Hipolito Irigoyen elected as the president of Argentina
• The Netherlands is hit by a North Sea storm that floods lowlands and kills 10.000 people
• Blaise Diagre , first black representative of Senegal in the French parliament

Ongoing events

• World War I (1914-1918)
• Armenian Genocide (1915-1918)
• Hellenic Holocaust (1914-1922)

Births

January-March

• Jack Agazarian, SOE agent and hero of WW II (d. 1945)
• January 3 - Betty Furness, actress, consumer activist (d. 1994)
• January 12 - Pieter Willem Botha, President of South Africa
• February 9 - Tex Hughson, Major League Baseball player (d. 1993)
• February 11 - Bernice Levin Neugarten , social scientist/gerontologist (d. 2001)
• February 11 - Joseph Alioto, Mayor of San Francisco (d. 1998)
• February 14 - Masaki Kobayashi, director
• February 26 - Jackie Gleason, comedian (d. 1987)
• February 29 - Dinah Shore, singer (d. 1994)
• March 3 - Paul Halmos, mathematician
• March 4 - Hans Eysenck, psychologist (d. 1997)
• March 11 - Harold Wilson, British prime minister (d. 1995)
• March 13 - John Aspinwall Roosevelt, businessman, philanthropist (d. 1981)
• March 14 - Horton Foote, writer
• March 15 - Harry James, musician, band leader (d. 1983)
• March 17 - Ray Ellington, British singer (d. 1985)
• March 19 - Irving Wallace, novelist (d. 1990)
• March 29 - Eugene McCarthy, former US Senator from Minnesota

April-June

• April 3 - Herb Caen, newspaper columnist (d. 1997)
• April 5 - Gregory Peck, actor (d. 2003)
• April 12 - Beverly Cleary, author
• April 15 – Alfred S. Bloomingdale, department store heir (d. 1982)
• April 15 - Helene Hanff , author (d. 1997)
• April 22 - Yehudi Menuhin, American violinist (d. 1999)
• April 25 - R.J. Rushdoony, founder of Christian Reconstructionism (d. 2001)
• April 30 - Claude Elwood Shannon, the "father of information theory (d. 2001)
• April 30 - Robert Shaw, American condcutor (d. 1999)
• May 8 - João Havelange, industrialist and FIFA president 1974-1998
• May 10 - Milton Babbitt, composer
• May 20 - Trebisonda Valla, athlete
• May 21 - Harold Robbins, novelist (d. 1997)
• May 21 - Tinus Osendarp, Dutch sprinter (d. 2002)
• May 26 - Henriette Roosenburg, journalist (d. 1972)
• June 8 - Francis Crick, scientist, Nobel laureate (d. 2004)
• June 23 - Len Hutton, English cricketer (d. 1990)
• June 23 - Hermann Gmeiner , pedagogue (d. 1986)
• June 23 - Irene Worth , actress (d. 2002)

July-December

• July 11 - Gough Whitlam, twenty-first Prime Minister of Australia, 1972-1975
• July 14 - Natalia Ginzburg , author (d. 1991)
• July 22 - Marcel Cerdan, World Champion Boxer (d. 1949)
• July 29 - Fmr Victorian Premier Sir Rupert Dick Hamer (1916-2004)
• July 31 - Bill Todman, game show producer (d. 1979)
• September 13 - Roald Dahl, author (d. 1990)
• October 19 - Emil Gilels, Ukrainian pianist (d. 1994)
• October 30 - Leon Day, baseballer (d. 1995)
• November 4 - Walter Cronkite, anchorman
• November 10 - Louis le Brocquy, leading Irish painter
• November 24 - Forrest J. Ackerman, writer
• November 27 - Chick Hearn, pro-basketball announcer (d. 2002)
• November 28 - Mary Lilian Baels, Princess of Rethy, Belgium (d. 2002)
• December 9 - Kirk Douglas, US actor
• December 11 - Dámaso Pérez Prado, Cuban musician (d. 1989)
• December 19 - Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann , publicist

Deaths

• February 6 - Rubén Darío, writer
• February 12 - Richard Dedekind, mathematician
• February 28 - Henry James, American writer (b. 1843)
• May 3 - Padraig Pearse, Irish nationalist
• May 11 - Max Reger, composer
• May 13 - Sholom Aleichem, Ukrainian Yiddish writer (b. 1859)
• June 6 - Yuan Shikai, Chinese military official and politician
• June 29 - Georges Lacombe, French artist
• July 6 - Odilon Redon, French painter (b. 1840)
• July 23 - Sir William Ramsay, chemist and Nobel prize winner
• October 7 - James Whitcomb Riley, American poet
• October 28 - Cleveland Abbe, U.S. meteorologist (b. 1838)
• November 13 - Lanoe Hawker, British fighter pilot.
• November 14 - Saki, writer (b. 1870)
• November 15 - Henryk Sienkiewicz, Polish author (b. 1846)
• November 22 - Jack London, American author (b. 1876)
• November 24 - Hiram Stevens Maxim, inventor of Maxim Gun (b. 1840)
• December 5 - Princess Augusta of Cambridge, the last grandchild of George III
• December 28 - Eduard Strauss, composer (b. 1835)
• December 29/December 30 - Grigori Rasputin, Russian monk & mystic
• February 19 - Ernst Mach, physicist and philosopher

Nobel Prizes

• Physics - not awarded
• Chemistry - not awarded
• Medicine - not awarded
• Literature - Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam
• Peace - not awarded