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1916
• On the Western Front, the battles of Verdun and the Somme result in huge losses of life with little strategic advantage. Although the British army uses tanks for the first time in September, the trench war stalemate continues. • On 24 April, the Easter Rising by the Irish Citizen Army against British rule in Ireland begins in Dublin. By 1 May, British troops restore order and 15 rebel leaders are executed. One leader, Eamonn de Valera, is not executed because he has American citizenship. • On 31 May/1 June, at the battle of Jutland, the German fleet damages the British navy but fails to gain control of the North Sea. • In June, the Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire begins with Prince Faisal's attack on Turkish troops at Aqabah. Later, he works closely with the British guerrilla leader T E Lawrence ('Lawrence of Arabia'). • In Mesopotamia (Iraq), British troops fight the Ottoman empire to protect oil fields in Persia (Iran). In April, at Kut-al-Amara, the British suffer a major defeat. • On 5 December, British prime minister H H Asquith resigns following a dispute with his war secretary David Lloyd George. Lloyd George becomes Coalition prime minister the following day. • On 31 December in St Petersburg, Grigori Rasputin, a mystic and adviser to the Russian tsar and his wife, is assassinated by a group of nobles. • Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born radical activist who campaigns for black rights, arrives in New York. • In Zurich, in neutral Switzerland, the Dada art movement – which revels in staging absurd performances and weird happenings and creating nihilistic anti-art – emerges. |
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