What Happened in December 1916

Historical Events

Dec 1 There is virtual civil war in Greece as royalists fight Eleftherios Venizelos' Liberal Party, the Allies ensure a Venizelist victory

Dec 2 National Baseball Commission orders that injured players get full pay for duration of their contracts; injury clause previously let clubs suspend players after 15 days' pay
Dec 6 World War I: The Central Powers under General Mackensen capture Bucharest

Dec 7 David Lloyd George replaces resigning H. H. Asquith as British Prime Minister

Dec 11 David Lloyd George forms British war government
Dec 13 Avalanche kills 10,000 Austrian and Italian troops in 24 hrs in Tyrol
Dec 13 Esme Stuart Lennox Robinsons premieres in Dublin
Dec 13 French chief of staff Joffre replaced by Nivelle
Dec 14 America's first board certified doctors are named by the American Board of Ophthalmology following an examination at the University of Tennessee Medical School in Memphis, Tennessee
Dec 15 Battle of Verdun: French launch major offensive against German lines after a six-day artillery bombardment
Dec 18 Battle of Verdun, longest of World War I, officially ends in German defeat after nine months of fighting and almost 1 million total casualties
Dec 19 Suriname Bauxite Company forms in Paramaribo
Dec 23 World War I: Battle of Magdhaba - Allied forces defeat Turkish forces in Egypt's Sinai peninsula
Dec 26 Joseph Joffre becomes marshal of France

Dec 1 Wan Li, Chinese reform politician, born in Dongping County, Shandong province (d. 2015)
Dec 2 Charlie Ventura [Venturo], American jazz tenor saxophonist and bandleader (Bop for the People), born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (d. 1992)
Dec 2 John Bentley, British actor (African Patrol, Crossroads), born in Birmingham, England (d. 2009)
Dec 4 Ely Jacques Kahn, Jr., American writer, born in New York City (d. 1994)
Dec 4 Lew Jenkins, American boxer (World Lightweight Champion 1940-41), born in Milburn, Texas (d. 1981)
Dec 5 Margaret Hayes, American actress (Blackboard Jungle, Robert Montgomery Presents), born in Baltimore, Maryland (d. 1977)
Dec 6 Hugo Peretti, American songwriter and record producer ("Shout"; "Twistin' The Night Away"), born in New York City (d. 1986)
Dec 7 Jean Carignan, French Canadian fiddler, born in Lévis, Quebec (d. 1988)
Dec 8 Richard Fleischer, American film director (Doctor Dolittle), born in New York City (d. 2006)

Dec 9 American actor (Spartacus, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral), born in Amsterdam, New York

Dec 9 Merrill Ellis, American classical and experimental music composer, and performer (Kaleidoscope; Mutations), born in Cleburne, Texas (d. 1981)
Dec 9 Wolfgang Hildesheimer, German-Swiss architect and writer (Mozart biog), born in Hamburg, Germany (d. 1991)
Dec 13 Mark Stevens, American actor (Big Town, Martin Kane, Private Eye), born in Cleveland, Ohio (d. 1994)

Dec 14 American writer (Road Through the Wall), born in San Francisco, California

Dec 15 (Edwin) "Buddy" Cole, American jazz and session pianist, Hammond organist, orchestra leader, and composer ("Truth Or Consequences"), born in Irving, Illinois (d. 1964)
Dec 15 Maurice Wilkins, New Zealand-born English physicist whose X-ray diffraction studies of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) with Rosalind Franklin, proved crucial to discovery of DNA’s molecular structure by James Watson and Francis Crick (Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 1962), born in Pongaroa, New Zealand (d. 2004) [1] [2]
Dec 16 Theo Bitter, Dutch painter and set designer (d. 1994)
Dec 16 Udom Patpongsiri, Thai property developer (Father of the Thai sex industry), (d. 1996)
Dec 17 Penelope Fitzgerald, English writer (d. 2000)
Dec 17 Toon Hermans, Dutch poet (Kolderliedjes), born in Sittard, Netherlands (d. 2000)

Dec 18 American singer, dancer, pin-up girl and actress (I Wake Up Screaming, How to Marry a Millionaire, Gay Divorcee), born in St. Louis, Missouri

Dec 19 Adriaan van der Veen, Dutch writer (Sister at Sea), born in Venray, Netherlands (d. 2003)
Dec 19 Hal Hastings, American orchestra leader (Chevrolet on Broadway), born in New York City (d. 1973)
Dec 19 Merv Wallace, New Zealand cricket batsman and captain (13 Tests, 5 x 50; Auckland), born in Auckland, New Zealand (d. 2008)
Dec 20 Michel Chartrand, French Canadian union activist, born in Outremont, Quebec (d. 2010)
Dec 21 Eve Perrick, British journalist (The Daily Mail) (d. 1995)
Dec 21 John Boon, British publisher (Mills and Boon), born in King's Lynn, Norfolk (d. 1996)
Dec 23 Dino Risi, Italian film director and screenwriter (Scent of a Woman), born in Milan, Italy (d. 2008)
Dec 24 (Eduardo) "Lalo" Guerrero, American guitarist, Chicano singer-songwriter (Los Carlistas), and women's rights activist, born in Tucson, Arizona (d. 2005)
Dec 25 Daniel Devoto, Argentine folklorist, musicologist, and poet, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina (d. 2001)
Dec 26 Helmut Eder, Austrian composer, born in Linz (d. 2005)
Dec 27 Werner Baumbach, German bomber pilot (d. 1953)
Dec 28 Nelly Adamson Landry, French tennis player (French C'ships 1948), born in Bruges, Belgium (d. 2010)
Dec 28 Noel Johnson, British actor (Frenzy, Frightmare, Royal Flash), born in Birmingham, England (d. 1999)
Dec 31 Suzy Delair, French actress (The Murderer Lives at Number 21; Utopia; White Paws), and singer, born in Paris, France (d. 2020)

Dec 30 MLB player Honus Wagner (42) weds Bessie Baine Smith (26) at St John's Church in Carnegie, Pennsylvania

Dec 1 Charles Eugène, vicomte de Foucauld, French explorer (Morocco) and ascetic, killed in the Sahara during an uprising at 58
Dec 2 Paolo Tosti, Italian composer, dies at 69
Dec 5 Hans Richter, Austrian-Hungarian composer, dies at 73
Dec 5 Princess Augusta of Cambridge, Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and granddaughter of George III, dies at 94
Dec 9 Natsume Sōseki, Japanese novelist (b. 1867)
Dec 9 P Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, French economist (Economist France), dies at 73
Dec 16 Friedrich Ernst Dorn, German physicist who discovered that radon is emitted from radium, dies at 68
Dec 20 Manuel Giro, Spanish composer, dies at 68
Dec 20 William Wallace Gilchrist, American composer, dies at 70
Dec 25 Albert Chmielowski, Polish Catholic Saint, dies at 71
Dec 26 Bernhard Scholz, composer, dies at 81
Dec 26 Frank Penn, cricketer (one Test for England v Australia 1880), dies
Dec 26 Willie Smith, Scottish golfer (US Open 1899), dies of pneumonia at 40
Dec 27 Nicolai Soloviev, Russian music critic and composer, dies at 70
Dec 28 Eduard Strauss, Austrian composer (318 dances), dies at 81

Dec 30 Russian monk and confidant of Russian Tsar Nicholas II, assassinated by conservative Russian aristocrats at 47

Dec 31 Alice Ball, African American chemist (developed treatment for leprosy), dies at 24
Dec 31 Ernst Rudorff, composer, dies at 76