Charles Fort: A Fortean Chronology, 1916.

The year 1916 (MCMXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar.

January

January 1: The Royal Army Medical Corps first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled.
January 12: Buildings are shaken in Cincinnati, Ohio. Flashes were seen in the sky. (Books520)
January 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 3 day-hour period.
January 29: World War I. Paris is bombed by German zeppelins for the first time.

February

March

March 8-9: Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa leads 1,500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico, killing 12 U.S. soldiers.
March 15: President Woodrow Wilson sends 12,000 United States troops over the U.S.-Mexico border to pursue Pancho Villa.
March 20: At the age of 32, Ota Benga, a Congolese pygmy brought to America as part of a racist exhibition, builds a ceremonial fire, chips off the caps on his teeth, performs a final tribal dance, and shoots himself in the heart with a stolen pistol.
March 22: The last Emperor of China, Yuan Shikai, abdicates the throne and the Republic of China is restored.

April

April 22: The Chinese steamer ship Hsin Yu capsizes off the Chinese coast; at least 1,000 are killed.
April 24-30: The Easter Rising occurs in Ireland. The Rising was an attempt by militant Irish republicans to win independence from Britain.

May

May 5: United States Marines invade the Dominican Republic.
May 16: Britain and France conclude the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, which is to divide Arab areas of the Ottoman Empire, following the conclusion of World War I, into French and British spheres of influence.
May 21: Britain initiates daylight saving time.
May 28: Frank A. Fort, Charles Fort's uncle, passes away. He wills his estate to Charles and his two brothers, Raymond and Clarence. From this time on, Charles Fort is financially independent.
May 31-June 1: Battle of Jutland: The British Navy and the German Navy battle to a draw.

June

June 4: The Brusilov Offensive, the height of Russian operations in WWI, begins with their breaking through Austro-Hungarian lines.

July

July 1: November 18: More than 1 million soldiers die during the Battle of the Somme, including 60,000 casualties for the British Commonwealth on the first day.
July 1-12: At least one shark mauls 5 swimmers along 80 miles (130 km) of New Jersey coastline, resulting in 4 deaths and the survival of one youth who required limb amputation.
July 8-16: Massive flooding caused by 2 different hurricanes devastates western North Carolina.
July 19: A formation having the shape of a dirigible is seen in the sky over Huntington, West Virginia. It gradually dimmed, disappeared, reappeared, and then faded out of view. (Books290)
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, killing 233.
July 30: German agents cause the Black Tom explosion in Jersey City, New Jersey, an act of sabotage destroying an ammunition depot and killing at least 7 people.
July 31: At Balinasloe, Ireland, a moving, exploring, thing is seen in the sky. (Books520)

August

September

September 2: British pilot William Leefe-Robinson becomes the first to shoot down a German airship over Britain.
September 13: Mary, a circus elephant, is hanged in the town of Erwin, Tennessee for killing her handler, Walter "Red" Eldridge.
September 26: A 'Thunderstone' is said to have fallen at Cardiff. (Books107)

October

October 10: A reddish shadow that spread over part of the lunar crater Plato, is reported from the Observatory of Florence, Italy. (Books521)
October 16: Margaret Sanger opens the first U.S. birth control clinic, a forerunner of Planned Parenthood.
October 21: Friedrich Adler shoots Karl von Stürgkh, Prime Minister of Austria.

November

November 1: Paul Miliukov delivers the famous "stupidity or treason" speech in the Russian State Duma, precipitating the downfall of the Boris Stürmer government.
November 5: The Kingdom of Poland is proclaimed by a joint act of the emperors of Germany and Austria.
November 7: U.S. presidential election, Democratic President Woodrow Wilson narrowly defeats Republican Charles E. Hughes.
November 7: Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the United States House of Representatives.
November 21: The White Star Liner HMHS Britannic, sister ship of the RMS Olympic and the legendary RMS Titanic, sinks in the Mediterranean Sea after hitting a mine. 30 lives are lost.
November 25: About twenty-five bright flashes are seen in the sky above Cardiff, Wales. (Books521)

December

December 12: In the Dolomites, an avalanche buries 18,000 Austrian and Italian soldiers.
December 23: World War I – Battle of Magdhaba: In the Sinai desert, Australian and New Zealand mounted troops capture the Turkish garrison.
December 23: Thomas W. Morphey, proprietor of the Lake Denmark Hotel near Dover, N.J., found his housekeeper Lilian Green, burned and dying. On the floor under her was a small charred place, but nothing else, except her clothes, showed any trace of fire. (Books929)
December 29: Grigori Rasputin is murdered by two Romanov family members.
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.

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