1914: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Events

• January 4 - 77 seal hunters freeze to death on ice near Labrador
• January 5 - Ford Motor Company announces an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a day's labor
• February 13 - Copyright: In New York City the ASCAP (for American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members
• March 10 – Suffragette Mary Richardson damages Velasquez painting Rokeby Venus in London’s national gallery with a meat chopper
• March 16 - Wife of French minister Joseph Caillaux shoots Gaston Calmet, the editor of le Figaro because he threatened to publish Caillaux's love letters to her during his previous marriage (she is later acquitted)
• March 27 – Belgian surgeon A. Hustin makes the fist successful blood transfusion using anticoagulants
• April 14 - The city of Irving, Texas was incorporated
• April 21 - 3000 US marines land in Vera Cruz, Mexico
• May - American Radio Relay League founded
• May 14 - Woodrow Wilson signs Mother's Day proclamation
• May 14 - The Hellenic Holocaust begins in the Ottoman Empire
• May 25 - The United Kingdom's House of Commons passes Irish Home Rule
• May 29 - Ocean liner Empress of Ireland sinks in Gulf of St. Lawrence; 1,024 lives lost
• June 1 - Woodrow Wilson's envoy Edward Mandell House meets with Kaiser Wilhelm II
• June 28 - The assassination in Sarajevo: Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria is killed by Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia
• July 18 - Within the United States Army the Signal Corps is formed giving definite status to its air service for the first time
• July 28 - World War I begins: Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia after it failed to meet the conditions of an ultimatum it set on July 23 following the Sarajevo assassination
• July 31 - French pacifist Jean Jaures assassinated.
• August 1 - Germany declares war on Russia following latter's military mobilization in support of Serbia
• August 2 - German troops occupy Luxembourg
• August 2 - Secret treaty between Turkey and Germany to secure Turkish neutrality
• August 3 - Germany declares war on Russia's ally France
• August 4 - German troops invade neutral Belgium in advance on France. Britain declares war on Germany after the latter fails to undertake to respect Belgian neutrality. The United States declares neutrality
• August 5 - In Cleveland, Ohio, the first electric traffic light is installed
• August 15 - Panama Canal opens to traffic
• August 23, Japan declares war on Germany
• August 20 - World War I: German forces occupy Brussels
• September 1 - St. Petersburg, Russia changes its name to Petrograd
• September 5 – London Agreement - no member of Triple Entente (Britain France or Russia) may seek separate peace with Central Powers.
• September 5 - World War I: First Battle of the Marne begins - Northeast of Paris, the French 6th Army under General Michel-Joseph Maunoury attack German forces who are advancing on the capital. Over 2 million troops will fight in the battle and 100,000 will be killed or wounded in this significant Allied victory
• September 6 - French and British counterattack at Marne ends German advance on Paris
• September 26 - The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) established by the Federal Trade Commission Act
• October 9 - World War I: Siege of Antwerp - Antwerp, Belgium falls to German troops
• October 29 - World War I: Ottoman warships shell Russian Black Sea ports: Russia, France and Britain declare war on November 1-5
• November 1 - World War I: Battle of Coronel fought - A Royal Navy squadron commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock is met and defeated by the superior German forces led by Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee. This is the first British naval defeat of the war
• November 4 - Britain and France declares war on Turkey
• November 5 - The United Kingdom annexes Cyprus, and together with France declares war on the Ottoman Empire
• November 16 - A year after being created by passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opens for business
• November 28 - World War I: Following a war-induced closure in July, the New York Stock Exchange re-opens for bond trading

• Ludlow Massacre in Colorado – 33 dead
• Marcus Garvey in Jamaica founds Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
• First everyday items made of stainless steel come to public circulation
• French buddhist Alexandra David-Neel visits Tibet in disguise as the first european woman
• Prediction of Jehovah's Witnesses that the world will end at this year, proves uncorrect
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi returns to India from South Africa to spearhead the Indian independence movement.
• W. H. Carrier patents design of air conditioner
• The capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China moved from Guilin to Nanning

Ongoing events

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

• January 1 - Noor Inayat Khan, WW II heroine, executed by the Nazis (d. 1944)
• January 4 - Jane Wyman, actress
• January 5 - George Reeves, actor (d. 1959)
• January 6 - Danny Thomas, singer, actor, comedian (d. 1991)
• January 14 - Harold Russell, actor (d. 2002)
• January 17 - William Stafford, poet and pacifist (d. 1993)
• January 18 - Arno Schmidt, author (d. 1979)
• January 30 - David Wayne, actor (d. 1995)
• January 30 - John Ireland, actor (d. 1992)
• January 31 - Jersey Joe Walcott, boxer (d. 1994)
• February 4 - Alfred Andersch, narrator and author of radio drama (d. 1980)
• February 4 - Ida Lupino, actress, director, writer (d. 1995)
• February 5 - William S. Burroughs, US author (d. 1997)
• February 6 - Thurl Ravenscroft, voice-over actor ("Tony the Tiger")
• February 9 - Gypsy Rose Lee, actress, ecdysiast (d. 1970)
• February 9 - Ernest Tubb, country music singer (d. 1984)
• February 11 - Matt Dennis, singer
• February 11 - French Duynstee, Dutch constitutional lawyer
• February 11 - Menelaos Pallantios, composer
• February 11 - Winand Borgerhoff Mulder court judge of Amsterdam
• February 12 - Tex Beneke, musician, band leader (d. 2000)
• February 24 - Zachary Scott, actor
• March 1 - Ralph Ellison, writer (d. 1994)
• March 2 - Martin Ritt, director (d. 1990)
• March 13 - Edward O'Hare, US pilot (d. 1943)
• March 17 - Sammy Baugh, American football star
• March 19 - Jay Berwanger, football star, 1st Heisman Trophy winner (d. 2002)
• March 26 - William Westmoreland, United States commander in Vietnam War
• March 28 - Edmund Muskie, United States politician (d. 1996)
• March 30 - Sonny Boy Williamson, musician
• March 31 - Octavio Paz, author, Nobel Prize for Literature (d. 1998)
• April 2 - Alec Guinness, actor (d. 2000)
• April 4 - Marguerite Duras, writer (d. 1996)
• April 22 - Jan de Hartog, writer (d. 2002)
• April 25 - Ross Lockridge Jr., writer (d. 1948)
• April 26 - Bernard Malamud, author (d. 1986)
• April 26 - Lilian Rolfe, SOE agent executed by the Nazis (d. 1945)
• May 8 - Romain Gary, writer and diplomat (d. 1980)
• May 9 - Hank Snow, country musician (d. 1999)
• May 12 - Howard K. Smith, journalist (d. 2002)
• May 13 - Joe Louis, boxer (d. 1981)
• May 19 - Go Seigen, Go player
• May 19 - Max Perutz, molecular biologist (d. 2002)
• May 22 - Vance Packard, author (d. 1996)
• May 22 - Sun Ra, jazz musician (d. 1993)
• May 28 - W. G. G. Duncan Smith, World War II pilot (d. 1996)
• May 29 - Tenzing Norgay, Sherpa (d. 1986)
• May 29 - Eduard Pestel, scientist and engineer (d. 1988)
• May - Arnold Gerschwiler, figure skating trainer (d. 2003)
• June 15 - Yuri Andropov, soviet politician and General Secretary of CPSU (d. 1984)
• June 19 - Alan Cranston, US senator (d. 2000)
• June 21 - William Vickrey, economist (d. 1996)
• July 15 - Hammond Innes, English adventure writer (d. 1998)
• July 19 - John Kenneth Macalister, Canadian SOE agent (d. 1944)
• July 30 - Lord Killanin, sixth president of the IOC (d. 1999)
• August 17 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., lawyer, politician (d. 1988)
• August 17 - Gabrielle Weidner, Belgian heroine of World War II (d. 1945)
• September 5 - Sor Isolina Ferré, Puerto Rican catholic nun (d. 2000)
• September 12 - Desmond Llewelyn, British actor, (Q in the James Bond movies) (d. 1999)
• September 12 - Janusz Zurakowski, Polish-Canadian pilot (d. 2004)
• September 16 - Allen Funt, host of Candid Camera (d. 1999)
• September 23 - Bethsabée de Rothschild, philanthropist and patron of dance (d. 1999)
• October 6 - Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian explorer (d. 2002)
• October 14 - Dick Durrance, American skier (d. 2004)
• October 16 - Zahir Shah, King of Afghanistan
• October 21 - Martin Gardner, writer on mathematics and games
• October 27 - Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet and author (d. 1953)
• October 28 - Jonas Salk, medical scientist, developer of polio vaccine (d. 1995)
• November 11 - Howard Fast, American novelist and television writer
• November 20 - Charles Berlitz, author (d. 2003)
• November 20 - Jean-Pierre Grenier, actor (d. 2000)
• November 25 - Joe DiMaggio, American baseball player (d. 1999)
• December 10 - Dorothy Lamour, actress (d. 1996)
• December 24 - Herbert Reinecker, German writer
• December 26 - Richard Widmark, actor
• December 29 - Billy Tipton, jazz musician (d. 1989)
• December 30 - Bert Parks, singer, actor, host of Miss America Pageant (d. 1992)

• March 1 - Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 4th Earl of Minto (b. 1845)
• March 6 – George Washington Vanderbilt, businessman
• April 1 - Rube Waddell, Baseball Hall of Famer
• May 2 - John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll, husband of Princess Louise of the United Kingdom, aunt of King George V
• June 21 - Bertha von Suttner, winner of 1905 Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1843)
• June 28 - Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria
• June 28 - Archduchess Sophie Chotek, wife of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria
• July 3 - Joseph Chamberlain, British politician
• August 12 - John Philip Holland, developer of the submarine (b. 1840)
• August 20 - Pope Pius X
• August 30 - Aleksander Samsonov, Russian general
• September 1 - Martha, the last passenger pigeon
• September 3 - Albéric Magnard, composer
• December 24 - John Muir, naturalist (b. 1838)

• Physics - Max von Laue
• Chemistry- Theodore William Richards
• Medicine - Robert Bárány
• Literature - not awarded
• Peace - not awarded