The World in 1915 the year the war spread past Europe
~2.5MCars and trucks on US roads
$20.70Call, New York to San Francisco
$500MLoan US banks make to the Allies
18 minsTime the Lusitania takes to sink
~170 tonsGas released at Ypres in Belgium
1stZeppelin bombs to fall on London
~33%Rise in British food prices
~8,700Australians killed at Gallipoli
21Demands Japan makes of China
The first coast to coast phone call cost $20.70 for three minutes. A factory hand earning about two dollars a day would have worked most of two weeks to pay for one short conversation.
Life back then
Most houses still ran on flame. Gas jets or oil lamps lit the rooms, a coal furnace or a kitchen range made the heat, and somebody carried the ashes out every morning. Only about one home in five had electric light, so a bulb was still something you showed visitors. A gas lamp in the hallway looked normal, not old fashioned. Clothes were sewn at home on a treadle machine, and the ice man came round by wagon.
The year in 8 events
- 📞Jan 25 Alexander Graham Bell in New York speaks to Thomas Watson in San Francisco, the first call across the country.
- 🎬Feb 8 The Birth of a Nation opens in Los Angeles. It draws huge crowds and protests over its racist story.
- 🕯️Apr 24 Ottoman police arrest hundreds of Armenian leaders in Constantinople. Mass killings and forced marches follow, and up to 1.5 million Armenians die.
- ⚓Apr 25 Allied troops land at Gallipoli in Turkey. Australians and New Zealanders come ashore at a cove that is still called Anzac.
- 🕯️May 7 A German submarine sinks the liner Lusitania off Ireland. Nearly 1,200 people die, 128 of them American, and opinion in the United States turns hard against Germany.
- ⚔️May 23 Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary and opens a new front in the Alps.
- 🕯️Oct 12 A German firing squad shoots Edith Cavell, a British nurse who had helped Allied soldiers escape from Belgium.
- 🔬Nov 25 Albert Einstein presents the equations of general relativity to the academy in Berlin.
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