1915 in the United States

Events from the year 1915 in the United States.

Incumbents

Federal Government

* President: Woodrow Wilson ( D-New Jersey)
* Vice President: Thomas R. Marshall ( D-Indiana)
* Chief Justice: Edward Douglass White (Louisiana)
* Speaker of the House of Representatives: Champ Clark ( D-Missouri)
* Congress: 63rd (until March 4), 64th (starting March 4)

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 (''Severe'').

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."Grim Tragedy in Woods"
''The New York Times'', August 19, 1915.
* 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 (''Extreme''), 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'' (not ''de jure'' until 1917).
* November 18 – Release of ''Inspiration'', the first mainstream movie in which a leading actress (Audrey Munson) appears nude.
* November 23 – The Triangle Film Corporation opens its new motion picture theater in Massillon, Ohio.
* November 27 (Thanksgiving Night) – 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 (1890s–1920s)
* Lochner era (c. 1897–c. 1937)
* U.S. occupation of Haiti (1915–1934)

Births

* January 1 – Tom Godwin, science fiction author (died 1980)
* January 2 – John Hope Franklin, historian (died 2009)
* January 3 – Sid Hudson, baseball player (died 2008)
* January 4 – Meg Mundy, English-born actress (died 2016)
* January 5 – Arthur H. Robinson, geographer and cartographer (died 2004)
* January 6 – Don Edwards, politician (died 2015)
* January 9 – Anita Louise, actress (died 1970)
* January 14 – Mark Goodson, television game show producer (died 1992)
* January 16 – Leslie H. Martinson, television and film director (died 2016)
* January 20 – Edward Stewart, set decorator (died 1999)
* January 22 – C. L. Franklin, minister and Civil Rights Activist, father of Aretha Franklin (died 1984)
* January 24 – Robert Motherwell, painter (died 1991)
* January 29 – John Serry, Sr., musician, composer and arranger (died 2003)
* January 30 – Ed Keats, admiral (died 2019)
* January 31
** Alan Lomax, folklorist and musicologist (died 2002)
** Thomas Merton, monk and author (died 1968)
* February 5 – Robert Hofstadter, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1990)
* February 10 – Karl Winsch, baseball player and manager (died 2001)
* February 12
** Richard G. Colbert, admiral (died 1973)
** Andrew Goodpaster, general (died 2005)
* February 14 – Ray Evans, composer (died 2007)
* February 16 – Jim O'Hora, college football coach (died 2005)
* February 21 – Ann Sheridan film actress (died 1967)
* February 23 – Paul Tibbets, World War II bomber pilot (''Enola Gay'') (died 2007)
* February 26 – Preacher Roe, baseball player (died 2008)
* February 28 – Zero Mostel, born Samuel Mostel, film and stage actor (died 1977)
* March 20
** Marie M. Runyon, political activist (died 2018)
** Sister Rosetta Tharpe, gospel singer (died 1973)
* March 29 – Helen Yglesias, novelist (died 2008)
* April 4 – Muddy Waters, born McKinley Morganfield, African-American blues musician (died 1983)
* April 7
** Stanley Adams, actor (died 1977)
** Albert O. Hirschman, German-born economist (died 2012)
** Billie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan, African-American jazz blues singer (died 1959)
* April 16 – Joan Alexander