March 4, 1913 - Woodrow Wilson inaugurated as 28th president; pushed through ambitious domestic programs—including the Federal Reserve Act, creation of the Federal Trade Commission; second term, which began in 1916, marked irrevocably by the First World War.

March 4, 1913 - Department of Commerce and Labor split into separate departments.

December 23, 1913 - Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 which promised to change the nation's banking system. The act paved the way for the Federal Banking System, a network of twelve regional banks. To help forward this plan, the act also called for all national banks to join the federal system via hefty one-time deposits into a pooled account. In turn, the Federal Reserve banks were charged with serving as resources to aid and stabilize the nation's other banks. The resulting network of banks was tied together by the Federal Reserve Board, as well as the newly minted Federal Reserve note.

May 2, 1914 - U.S. president Wilson signs Harrison Narcotic Tax Act (by Representative Francis Burton Harrison of New York); required all persons licensed to sell narcotic drugs to file an inventory of their stocks with the Internal Revenue Service; December 17, 1914 - effective; beginning of America's "Drug War".

June 28, 1914 - Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand (heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire) and his wife, Sofia, were assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serb nationalist. The event triggered World War I. Ferdinand had been inspecting his uncle's imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the threat of Serbian nationalists who wanted the Austrian possessions to join newly independent Serbia. touring Sarajevo in an open car with little security when Serbian nationalist Nedjelko Cabrinovic threw a bomb at their car. Ferdinand managed to deflect the bomb onto the street, but a dozen people, including Sophie, were injured. Later in the day, the archduke and his wife were driving through Sarajevo's streets again when their driver took a wrong turn onto a street named after the archduke's uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph. As the car slowed to change direction, another Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, fired his pistol into the car, fatally wounding the archduke and his wife. July 28 - Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe's great powers collapsed. Within a week, Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Serbia had lined up against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and World War I had begun.

June 30, 1914 - Mahatma Gandhi's first arrest, campaigning for Indian rights in South Africa.

August 4, 1914 - President Woodrow Wilson formally proclaims the neutrality of the United States, a position that a vast majority of Americans favored. Wilson's initial hope that America could be "impartial in thought as well as in action" was soon compromised by Germany's attempted quarantine of the British Isles. Britain was one of America's closest trading partners, and tension arose between the United States and Germany when several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines.

August 18, 1914 - President Woodrow Wilson issued his Proclamation of Neutrality, aimed at keeping the United States out of World War I.

August 15, 1914 - The Panama Canal was inaugurated with the passage of the U.S. vessel Ancon, a cargo and passenger ship; ships heading from New York to San Francisco could save about 7,800 miles by taking the Panama Canal rather than sailing around South America; 1909 - construction began; cost the U.S. $375 million.

September 26, 1914 - The Federal Trade Commission was established to enforce anti-trust and consumer protection legislation; also served as link between government and the business community to foster competition in business and prevent monopolies.

October 15, 1914 - The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Clayton Antitrust Act (termed "labor's charter of freedom"); legally sanctioned unions, removed them from the jurisdiction of anti-trust laws; no longer viewed as barriers to trade, unions were free to strike, boycott, and picket their various gripes with management.

October 22, 1914 - Congress passed the Revenue Act, mandated the first tax on incomes over $3,000 (attempt to compensate for lost income associated with passage of the  Underwood-Simmons Act).

November 16, 1914 - Federal Reserve System opened.

November 20, 1914 - U.S. State Department starts requiring photographs for passports.

January 12, 1915 - Congress established Rocky Mountain National Park.

January 28, 1915 - An act of Congress created the Coast Guard to fight contraband trade and aid distressed vessels at sea.

March 16, 1915 - The Federal Trade Commission was organized; charged with curbing corporate actions that blocked competition and the free flow of international trade; also served to strengthen the ties between business and government. Agency aided exporters by keeping tabs on tariffs, threw its weight behind legislation that would sanction monopolies and trusts in the field of foreign trade; marked the further consolidation of power in the executive branch of the government.

April 28, 1915 - The International Congress of Women, referred to as the Women’s Peace Congress, convenes at The Hague, Netherlands, with more than 1,200 delegates from 12 countries—including Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Poland, Belgium and the United States—all dedicated to the cause of peace and a resolution of the great international conflict that was World War I; result of an invitation by a Dutch women’s suffrage organization, led by Aletta Jacobs, to women’s rights activists around the world, on the basis of the belief that a peaceful international assemblage of women would "have its moral effect upon the belligerent countries." American delegation included two future recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize: Jane Addams, the co-founder of Hull House, a social settlement that served as a welfare agency for needy families in Chicago, and Emily G. Balch, a sociologist who taught at Wellesley College. Another American delegate, Alice Hamilton, was a pathology professor and medical investigator who became the first female faculty member of Harvard University in 1919.

May 1, 1915 - British Lusitania leaves NY, for Liverpool.

May 24, 1915 - Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo, President Wilson's son-in-law, convened the Pan-American Conference in Washington DC; unveiled measures designed to boost foreign "trade and investment," most notably with Latin America; proposed the formation of a commission that would help standardize the key elements of international trade, including the gold standard and customs duties.

May 25, 1915 - In the latest of a disturbing series of Turkish aggressions against Armenians during World War I, Mehmed Talat, the Ottoman minister of the interior, announces that all Armenians living near the battlefield zones in eastern Anatolia (under Ottoman rule) will be deported to Syria and Mosul (military necessity required to preserve civil order). Large-scale deportations began five days later, after the decision was sanctioned by the Ottoman council of ministers. May 27, 1915 - the Ottoman council of ministers told the Turkish senior army command that if they encountered armed resistance or even opposition to the deportation from the local population they had "the authorization and obligation to repress it immediately and to crush without mercy every attack and all resistance."

June 9, 1915 - Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned due to his concerns over President Woodrow Wilson’s handling of the crisis generated by a German submarine’s sinking of the British cruiser Lusitania the previous month, in which 1,201 people—including 128 Americans—died. Bryan, as secretary of state, sent a note to the German government from the Wilson administration, lauding the ties of friendship and diplomacy between the two nations and expressing the desire that they "come to a clear and full understanding as to the grave situation which has resulted" from the sinking of the Lusitania. When the German government responded by justifying their navy’s action on the basis that the Lusitania was carrying munitions (which it was, a small amount), Wilson himself penned a strongly worded note, insisting that the sinking had been an illegal action and demanding that Germany cease unrestricted submarine warfare against unarmed merchantmen. Objecting to the strong position taken by Wilson in this second Lusitania note, and believing it could be taken as a precursor to a war declaration, Bryan tendered his resignation rather than sign it.

October 9, 1915 - Woodrow Wilson becomes first President to attend a World Series game.

October 15, 1915 - President Wilson signed Clayton Act into law; exempted unions from Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

October 23, 1915 - Some 25,000 women marched in New York City demanding the right to vote.

December 11, 1915 - The first president of the new Chinese republic, Yuan Shih-kai, who had come to power in the wake of revolution in 1911 and the fall of the Manchu Dynasty in 1912, accepts the title of emperor of China. January 1915 - Japan’s imperialist-minded foreign minister, Kato Takaaki, presented China with the so-called 21 Demands, which included the extension of direct Japanese control over more of Shantung, southern Manchuria, and eastern Inner Mongolia and the seizure of more territory, including islands in the South Pacific controlled by Germany. If accepted in their entirety, the 21 Demands would have essentially reduced China to a Japanese protectorate. Though Yuan, a former general and China’s president since February 1912, when he succeeded Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Peoples’ party, was forced to accept all but the most radical of the demands, he attempted to use Chinese anger over them to justify his bid for restoring the monarchy and installing himself as emperor. Having already dismissed the Chinese parliament and expelled the KMT party from the government, he was now ruling through provincial military governors throughout the country. The return to monarchy was met by such strong opposition within and outside of China, including from some of those same military governors, that Yuan was quickly forced to return the country to the republican form of government. 

December 18, 1915 - President Woodrow Wilson marries Edith Galt in Washington, DC. The bride was 43 and the groom was 59. It was the second marriage for Wilson, whose first wife died the year before from a kidney ailment. Edith, who claimed to be directly descended from Pocahantas, was the wealthy widow of a jewelry-store owner and a member of Washington high society.

January 24, 1916 - The Supreme Court handed down a decision in favor of the Sixteenth Amendment and paved the way for the federal income tax.

February 10, 1916 - Lindley M. Garrison resigns his position as the United States secretary of war as a result of bitter disagreements with President Woodrow Wilson over America’s national defense strategies; January 1913 - appointed secretary of war; Wilson regarded Garrison as notably hawkish with respect to America’s national defense; main disagreement - Wilson administration’s long-term national defense plans and short-term U.S. military preparedness in light of the ongoing war in Europe; Wilson favored a policy of strict neutrality, objected to Garrison’s belief that a full-time reserve army should be created as a foundation for national defense and, more immediately, for support in case the U.S. entered the European war; Newton D. Baker, former mayor of Cleveland, took over as secretary of war upon Garrison’s resignation - helped Wilson to reach the decision to enter the war in April 1917, submitted a plan for universal military conscription to Congress, presided over the mobilization of some 4 million American soldiers.

March 9, 1916 - Several hundred Mexican guerrillas under the command of Francisco "Pancho" Villa cross the U.S.-Mexican border and attack the small border town of Columbus, New Mexico. Seventeen Americans were killed in the raid, and the center of town was burned. It was unclear whether Villa personally participated in the attack, but President Woodrow Wilson ordered the U.S. Army into Mexico to capture the rebel leader dead or alive. Cavalry from the nearby Camp Furlong U.S. Army outpost pursued the Mexicans, killing several dozen rebels on U.S. soil and in Mexico before turning back. March 15, 1916 - under orders from President Wilson, U.S. Brigadier General John J. Pershing launched a punitive expedition into Mexico to capture Villa and disperse his rebels. The expedition eventually involved some 10,000 U.S. troops and personnel. It was the first U.S. military operation to employ mechanized vehicles, including automobiles and airplanes. June 21, 1916 - the crisis escalated into violence when Mexican government troops attacked a detachment of the 10th Cavalry at Carrizal, Mexico, leaving 12 Americans dead, 10 wounded, and 24 captured. The Mexicans suffered more than 30 dead. If not for the critical situation in Europe, war might have been declared.  January 1917 - Americans were ordered home, failed in their mission to capture Villa, and under continued pressure from the Mexican government..

April 17, 1916 - The American Academy of Arts and Letters obtained its charter from Congress.

April 24, 1916 - Around noon on Easter Monday some 1,600 Irish nationalists--members of the Irish Volunteers--launch the so-called Easter Rising in Dublin, seizing a number of official buildings and calling on all Irish patriots to resist the bonds of British control. Despite the rebels’ hopes, the public did not rise to support them, and they were quickly crushed by the police and government forces sent against them, among them some newly recruited troops bound for service in World War I. Sixty-four rebels were killed during the struggle, along with 134 troops and policeman, and at least 200 civilians were injured in the crossfire. Fifteen of the uprising’s leaders were eventually executed; a sixteenth, Eamon de Valera, was saved from a death sentence because he was an American citizen. Even in its failure, the Easter Rising and the continued volatility of the so-called "Irish question" demonstrated the thwarted desires for self-determination that still bubbled beneath the surface in Great Britain, as in many countries in Europe, even as the larger matter of international warfare superseded them for the moment.

June 3, 1916 - United States President Woodrow Wilson signs into law the National Defense Act, which expanded the size and scope of the National Guard—the network of states’ militias that had been developing steadily since colonial times—and guaranteed its status as the nation’s permanent reserve force. Act mandated that the term "National Guard" be used to refer to the combined network of states’ militias that became the primary reserve force for the U.S. Army. Act also set qualifications for National Guard officers, allowing them to attend Army schools; all National Guard units would now be organized according to the standards of regular Army units. For the first time, National Guardsmen would receive payment from the federal government not only for their annual training—which was increased from 5 to 15 days—but also for their drills, which were also increased, from 24 per year to 48. Finally, the National Defense Act formally established the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) to train and prepare high school and college students for Army service.

July 11, 1916 - President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Aid Road Act, the first grant-in-aid enacted by Congress to help states build roads; included the stipulation that all states have a highway agency staffed by professional engineers who would administer the federal funds as they saw fit. The bill on offer leaned in the favor of the rural populations by focusing on rural postal roads rather than interstate highways; cornerstone for U.S. highway system, precedent for all highway legislation to come; source of rural road improvement, helped rural Americans participate more efficiently in the national economy; 1907 - legal issue of the federal government's role in road-building was settled in the Supreme Court case Wilson vs. Shaw. Justice David Brewer wrote that the federal government could "construct interstate highways" because of their constitutional right to regulate interstate commerce.

July 17, 1916 - Congress passed the Federal Farm Loan Act -  called for the creation of a land bank (agrarian credit plan) to make loans to farmers who needed funds to preserve and upgrade their crops. Federal Farm Bureau established.

August 4, 1916 - The United States purchased the Danish Virgin Islands for $25 million.

August 25, 1916 - The National Park Service was established within the Department of the Interior.

August 29, 1916 - U.S. Congress accepts Jones Act: Philippines independence.

August 29, 1916 - Congress creates U.S. Naval reserve.

September 1, 1916 - Keating-Owen Act (child labor banned from interstate commerce).

September 7, 1916 - Congress passed Workmen's Compensation Act passed.

October 16, 1916 - Margaret Sanger opened the first birth-control clinic, in New York City.

November 7, 1916 - Democrat Woodrow Wilson is re-elected President of the United States; defeated Republican Charles Evans Hughes.

December 7, 1916 - David Lloyd George replaced the embattled prime minister of Britain, Herbert Asquith; had served as chancellor of the exchequer from 1908 to 1915 (championed small businessmen against privileged landowners and the aristocracy and pushed through radical budgets) and since then as minister for munitions and secretary of war. As prime minister, however, he saw the aggressive prosecution of the war as the principal task facing the British government. His first major project was to create a much-needed Imperial War Cabinet to direct the nation’s war strategy. Lloyd George held his country together and led it to victory in November 1918. He would also play a crucial role in the ensuing peace negotiations at Versailles, where he appeared rather moderate next to the angry demands of his French counterpart, Georges Clemenceau, and the idealistic notions of Woodrow Wilson. Lloyd George came to regret the Versailles Treaty, however, predicting—correctly, as it turned out—another major war within the next two decades.

February 3, 1917 - The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, which had announced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare = President Wilson's answer to the German notice that any merchant vessel which entered prescribed areas would be sunk without warning. Count von Bernstorff, the Kaiser's Ambassador, was given his passports (signed by Robert Lansing, Secretary of State, given to the German Ambassador personally by Lester H. Woolsey, an assistant solicitor of the State Department), as he was  dismissed from the U. S. by the Government. James W. Gerard, American Ambassador at Berlin, was ordered to return home with his staff. Party lines were obliterated in the general desire to support the Administration in dealing with a critical situation that most observers expected to result in the entrance of the United States into the European conflict. Diplomatic relations with Austria-Hungary were also severed; In Berlin, before learning of the president’s speech, German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann told U.S. Ambassador James J. Gerard that "Everything will be alright. America will do nothing, for President Wilson is for peace and nothing else. Everything will go on as before." He was proved wrong  as news arrived of the break in relations between America and Germany, a decisive step towards U.S. entry into the First World War.

February 5, 1917 - Mexican President Venustiano Carranza proclaims the modern Mexican constitution, which promises the restoration of lands to native peoples, the separation of church and state, and dramatic economic and educational reforms. The progressive political document, approved by an elected constitutional convention, combined revolutionary demands for land reform with advanced social theory. It would be decades before most of the sweeping reforms promised by the constitution became reality. 1920 - Carranza was deposed and killed, and lasting stability eluded Mexico until after World War II, when industrialism spurred by the war grew into a major part of the economy and Miguel Aleman became the first in an unbroken series of civilian presidents.

February 26, 1917 - President Woodrow Wilson learns of the so-called Zimmermann Telegram, a message from German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the event of a war between the U.S. and Germany; Wilson, shocked by the note's content, next day proposed to Congress that the U.S. should start arming its ships against possible German attacks. Wilson also authorized the State Department to publish the telegram. 

March 1, 1917 - Text of the so-called Zimmermann Telegram (intercepted and deciphered by British intelligence in January 1917), a message from the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German ambassador to Mexico proposing a Mexican-German alliance in the case of war between the United States and Germany and restoration to Mexico of the lost territories of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, is published on the front pages of newspapers across America. Many Americans were horrified and declared the note a forgery; two days later, however, Zimmermann himself announced that it was genuine.

March 2, 1917 - President Woodrow Wilson signs the Jones-Shafroth act. Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory and Puerto Ricans were granted statutory citizenship, meaning that citizenship was granted by an act of Congress and not by the Constitution (thus it was not guaranteed by the Constitution). The act also created a bill of rights for the territory, separated its government into executive, legislative and judicial branches, and declared Puerto Rico’s official language to be English. May 1917 - Wilson signed a compulsory military service act; 20,000 Puerto Ricans were eventually drafted to serve during World War I. Puerto Rican soldiers were sent to guard the Panama Canal, the important waterway, in operation since 1914, which joined the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean across the Isthmus of Panama in Central America. Puerto Rican infantry regiments were also sent to the Western Front, including the 396th Infantry Regiment of Puerto Rico, created in New York City, whose members earned the nickname "Harlem Hell Fighters." 1951 - Puerto Rican voters approved by referendum a new U.S. law granting the islanders the right to draft their own constitution. March 1952 - Luis Munoz Marin, Puerto Rico’s governor, proclaimed Puerto Rico a freely associated U.S. commonwealth under the new constitution; the status was made official that July. Though nationalist agitation for the island’s complete independence from the U.S. was a constant—as were calls for Puerto Rico to become a state—subsequent referendums confirmed the decision to remain a commonwealth.

March 8, 1917 - Russia's February Revolution (so called because of the Old Style calendar used by Russians at the time) began with rioting and strikes in St. Petersburg over the scarcity of food; March 15 - Czar Nicholas II abdicated the throne in favor of his brother Michael, whose refusal of the crown brought an end to centuries of czarist rule in Russia. The new provincial government, tolerated by the Petrograd Soviet, hoped to salvage the Russian war effort while ending the food shortage and many other domestic crises. It would prove a daunting task. Meanwhile, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik revolutionary party, left his exile in Switzerland and crossed German enemy lines to return home and take control of the Russian Revolution.

March 8, 1917 - The U.S. Senate voted to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule.

March 15, 1917 - Czar Nicholas II, ruler of Russia since 1894 (crowned on May 26, 1894), is forced to abdicate the throne by the Petrograd insurgents, and a provincial government is installed in his place. Army garrison at Petrograd joined striking workers in demanding socialist reforms, and Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. Nicholas and his family were first held at the Czarskoye Selo palace, then in the Yekaterinburg palace near Tobolsk. July 1918 - the advance of counterrevolutionary forces caused the Yekaterinburg Soviet forces to fear that Nicholas might be rescued. After a secret meeting, a death sentence was passed on the imperial family, and Nicholas, his wife, his children, and several of their servants were gunned down on the night of July 16.

March 31, 1917 - The United States took possession of the Danish West Indies for $25M from Denmark; renamed the Virgin Islands.

April 16, 1917 - Vladimir Lenin, leader of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party, returns to Petrograd after a decade of exile to take the reins of the Russian Revolution. Born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov in 1870, Lenin was drawn to the revolutionary cause after his brother was executed in 1887 for plotting to assassinate Czar Alexander III. December 1895 - Lenin and the other leaders of the Union were arrested. Lenin was jailed for a year and then exiled to Siberia for a term of three years. After the end of his exile, in 1900, Lenin went to Western Europe, where he continued his revolutionary activity (during this time that he adopted the pseudonym Lenin). After the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1905, Lenin returned to Russia (came to an end when Nicholas II promised reforms, including the adoption of a Russian constitution and the establishment of an elected legislature). 1907 - Lenin was again forced into exile. March 15, 1917 - Nicholas II was forced to abdicate, ending centuries of czarist rule. October 1917 - Lenin secretly returned to Petrograd; November 7  - Bolshevik-led Red Guards deposed the Provisional Government and proclaimed soviet rule. Lenin became the virtual dictator of the world's first Marxist state. His government made peace with Germany, nationalized industry, and distributed land; 1918 -  had to fight a devastating civil war against czarist forces; 1920 - the czarists were defeated; 1922  - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was established.

May 18, 1917 - President Wilson signed into law the Selective Service Act; gave the U.S. president the power to draft soldiers; required all men in the U.S. between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for military service. Within a few months, some 10 million men across the country had registered in response to the military draft. First troops of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), under commander in chief General John J. Pershing, began arriving on the European continent in June 1917. At the time of Congress’s war declaration the U.S. had only a small army of volunteers—some 100,000 men—that was in no way trained or equipped for the kind of fighting that was going on in Europe. By the end of World War I in November 1918, some 24 million men had registered under the Selective Service Act. Of the almost 4.8 million Americans who eventually served in the war, some 2.8 million had been drafted.

June 4, 1917 - American men begin registering for the draft.

June 15, 1917 - Some two months after America’s formal entrance into World War I against Germany, the United States Congress passed the Espionage Act. Enforced largely by A. Mitchell Palmer, the United States attorney general, Espionage Act essentially made it a crime for any person to convey information intended to interfere with the U.S. armed forces’ prosecution of the war effort or to promote the success of the country’s enemies. Anyone found guilty of such acts would be subject to a fine of $10,000 and a prison sentence of 20 years. 1918 - Sedition Act passed - imposed similarly harsh penalties on anyone found guilty of making false statements that interfered with the prosecution of the war; insulting or abusing the U.S. government, the flag, the Constitution or the military; agitating against the production of necessary war materials; or advocating, teaching or defending any of these acts. One of the most famous activists arrested during this period, labor leader Eugene V. Debs, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a speech he made in 1918 in Canton, Ohio, criticizing the Espionage Act. Debs appealed the decision, and the case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where the court upheld his conviction. Though Debs’ sentence was commuted in 1921 when the Sedition Act was repealed by Congress.

June 19, 1917 - During World War I, King George V (second son of Prince Edward of Wales, later King Edward VII, and Alexandra of Denmark, and the grandson of Queen Victoria); 1892 -  ascended to the throne when his older brother, Edward, died of pneumonia; 1893 - married the German princess Mary of Teck, ordered the British royal family to dispense with German titles and surnames; July 17, 1917 - changed the surname of his own family from Germanic Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, to Windsor. Outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914, strong anti-German feeling within Britain caused sensitivity among the royal family about its German roots. Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, also a grandson of Queen Victoria, was the king’s cousin; the queen herself was German.

July 15, 1917 - An uprising in Petrograd encouraged by Leon Trotsky, an official of the Bolshevik Party—the radical socialist movement led by Vladimir Lenin, recently returned from exile due to German help—succeeded in briefly toppling the provisional government. The Bolsheviks saw their opportunity and attempted to seize power in Petrograd, as fighting broke out in the streets. The violence peaked on July 17. The following day, officers loyal to the provisional government destroyed the offices of the Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda. Lenin, sensing the time was not yet ripe for revolution, went into hiding—albeit temporarily—and Kerensky took charge, restoring order and continuing his efforts to salvage the Russian war effort.

July 17, 1917 - With the country at war with Germany, the British royal family changed its name from the German Saxe-Coburg Gotha to Windsor.

July 20, 1917 - The World War I draft lottery began.

September 15, 1917 - Russia was proclaimed a republic by Alexander Kerensky, the head of a provisional government.

October 3, 1917 - Six months after the United States declared war on Germany and began its participation in the First World War, the U.S. Congress passes the War Revenue Act, lowering the number of exemptions and greatly increasing tax rates in order to raise more money for the war effort. Under the 1917 act, a taxpayer with an income of only $40,000 was subject to a 16 percent tax rate, while one who earned $1.5 million faced a rate of 67 percent. While only five percent of the U.S. population was required to pay taxes, U.S. tax revenue increased from $809 million in 1917 to a whopping $3.6 billion the following year. By the time World War I ended in 1918, income tax revenue had funded a full one-third of the cost of the war effort.

November 2, 1917 - British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour expressed support for a national home for the Jews of Palestine, became known as the Balfour Declaration; 1922 - approved by the League of Nations; Arabs opposed the Balfour Declaration, feared that creation of a Jewish homeland would mean the subjugation of Arab Palestinians.

November 5, 1917 - Supreme Court decision (Buchanan vs. Warley) strikes down Louisville Kentucky ordinance requiring blacks and whites to live in separate areas.

November 7, 1917 - Russia's Bolshevik Revolution took place as forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrew the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky. An armed naval detachment, under orders of the Maximalist Revolutionary Committee, has occupied the offices of the official Petrograd Telegraph Agency. The Maximalists also occupied the Central Telegraph office, the State Bank and Marin Palace, where the Preliminary Parliament had suspended its proceedings in view of the situation; November 8, 1917 - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin rises before the newly formed All-Russian Congress of Soviets ( in which the Bolsheviks held a 60 percent majority) to call for an immediate armistice with the Central Powers in World War I. "We shall now proceed to the construction of the socialist order," he announced. The first order of business for the new Bolshevik state was putting an end to Russia’s participation in what Lenin and his followers considered an imperialist, upper-class war. That day, the Congress adopted a manifesto calling for "all warring peoples and their governments to open immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace." A formal ceasefire between Russia and the Central Powers was declared on December 2. Russia’s exit from the war--which was formalized in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the following March--shook the Allied war effort to its very foundations, as Germany and Austria-Hungary would be now be able to shift all their efforts to the west. Even more importantly, the rise to power of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in Russia announced the arrival of a new vision of the world order--a vision that would over the next decades rise to challenge the ideals of liberal democracy not only in Europe but around the world.

November 15, 1917 - Georges Clemenceau (76) is named prime minister of France for the second time; first elected to parliament in 1876, five years after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. President Raymond Poincare put aside his personal dislike for "The Tiger"--as Clemenceau was known--and asked him to return as prime minister. Despite a long history of animosity between the two men, Poincare recognized that Clemenceau shared his desire to defeat Germany at all costs, and had the will to carry that desire to its end in spite of defeatist factions within the French government who called for an immediate end to the war. Immediately after taking office, Clemenceau had his most vocal pacifist opponent, Joseph Caillaux, arrested and charged with treason; he subsequently vowed no surrender, telling the chamber of deputies that France’s only duty now was "to cleave to the soldier, to live, to suffer, to fight with him." Over the next year, Clemenceau would hold his country together through the darkest days of the war and finally into the light: In November 1918, when he heard the Germans had agreed to an armistice, the old Tiger broke down in tears.

December 6, 1917 - The Bolsheviks imprisoned Czar Nicholas II and his family in Tobolsk.

December 7, 1917 - The United States declared war on Austria-Hungary.

December 26, 1917 - To support the war effort President Woodrow Wilson announces the nationalization of a large majority of the country’s railroads under the Federal Possession and Control Act; December 28 - United States Railroad Administration (USRA) seizes control; railroads divided into three divisions—East, West and South; passenger services streamlined, inessential travel eliminated, over 100,000 new railroad cars and 1,930 steam engines ordered (designed to latest standards) at a total cost of $380 million; March 1918 - Railroad Control Act passed into law; stated that within 21 months of a peace treaty, the railroads would be returned by the government to their owners who would be compensated for the use of their property; March 1920 - USRA disbanded, railroads became private property again.

March 11, 1918 - Moscow becomes capital of revolutionary Russia.

April 1, 1918 - Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) is formed with the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). The RAF took its place beside the British navy and army as a separate military service with its own ministry. 1945 - strength of the RAF was nearly one million personnel. Later, this number was reduced and stabilized at about 150,000 men and women.

May 16, 1918 - United States Congress passes the Sedition Act, designed to protect America’s participation in World War I (orchestrated largely by A. Mitchell Palmer, the United States attorney general). Aimed at socialists, pacifists and other anti-war activists, Act made it a crime for any person to convey information intended to interfere with the U.S. armed forces’ prosecution of the war effort or to promote the success of the country’s enemies. Those who were found guilty of making false statements that interfered with the prosecution of the war; insulting or abusing the U.S. government, the flag, the Constitution or the military; agitating against the production of necessary war materials; or advocating, teaching or defending any of these acts "shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both." This was the same penalty that had been imposed for acts of espionage in the earlier legislation. 1921 - Congress repealed the Sedition Act.

July 9, 1918 - Congress creates Distinguished Service Medal.

July 16, 1918 - Russia's Czar Nicholas II, his wife and their five children were executed by the Bolsheviks. Under house arrest since March 1917, the Romanovs had been taken to a cellar under the pretense of having their photograph taken when Bolshevik troops stormed in and shot them to death; November 1917 - Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, seized power in Russia and set about establishing the world's first communist state. April 1918 -  Nicholas transferred to Yekaterinburg in the Urals, which sealed their doom; June 1918 - civil war broke out in Russia; July 1918 - anti-Bolshevik "White" Russian forces advanced on Yekaterinburg during a campaign against the Bolshevik forces. Local authorities were ordered to prevent a rescue of the Romanovs, and after a secret meeting by the Yekaterinburg Soviet, a death sentence was passed on the imperial family. 

September 30, 1918 - President Woodrow Wilson gives a speech before Congress in support of guaranteeing women the right to vote. Although the House of Representatives had approved a 19th constitutional amendment giving women suffrage, the Senate had yet to vote on the measure; bill died in the Senate.

October 4, 1918 - German Chancellor Max von Baden, appointed by Kaiser Wilhelm II just three days earlier, sends a telegraph message to the administration of President Woodrow Wilson in Washington, DC, requesting an armistice between Germany and the Allied powers in World War I. Wilson’s response, in notes of October 14 and 23, made it clear that the Allies would only deal with a democratic Germany, not an imperial state with an effective military dictatorship presided over by the Supreme Command. Neither Wilson nor his even less conciliatory counterparts in Britain and France trusted von Baden’s declaration of October 5 that he was taking steps to move Germany towards parliamentary democracy. After Wilson’s second note arrived, Ludendorff’s resolve returned and he announced that the note should be rejected and the war resumed in full force. After peace had come so tantalizingly close, however, it proved even more difficult for Germans—on the battlefield as well as on the home front—to carry on. Within a month, Ludendorff had resigned, as the German position had deteriorated still further and it was determined that the war could not be allowed to continue. On November 7 - Hindenburg contacted the Allied Supreme Commander, Ferdinand Foch, to open armistice negotiations; four days later, World War I came to an end.

October 14, 1918 - Tomas Garrigue Masaryk became chairman of an interim Czechoslovak government; October 18, 1918 - announced in a Washington Declaration an independent Czechoslovak nation; Prague became the capital of the country and the Prague Castle became the seat of the president of Czechoslovakia; November 14, 1918 - Revolutionary National Assembly elected Masaryk in absentia President of the Republic; December 21, 1918 - Masaryk made a triumphant return to Prague and on the following day he delivered his first declaration to the National Assembly.

November 1, 1918 - The Hapsburg monarchy came to an end and two separate republics were proclaimed: the Hungarian Republic and the Austrian Republic.

November 6, 1918 - Republic of Poland proclaimed.

November 9, 1918 - Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II announced that he would abdicate.

November 11, 1918 - 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 - the Great War ends. WW I ended; more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives; nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure. The armistice between Germany, on the one hand, and the allied Governments and the United States, on the other, has been signed in a railroad car outside Compiegne, France. Terms Include Withdrawal from Alsace-Lorraine, Disarming and Demobilization of Army and Navy, and Occupation of Strategic Naval and Military Points

November 12, 1918 - A day after World War I ends, Austria and Hungary were declared independent republics, and Emperor Charles I, ruler of Austria-Hungary since 1916, was forced to abdicate.

November 18, 1918 - Latvia declares independence from Russia.

November 22, 1918 - Marshal J Pilsudski becomes first president (dictator) of Poland.

December 1, 1918 - Iceland became an independent state from Denmark, though still remained under the king of Denmark.

December 2, 1918 - Armenia proclaimed independence from Turkey.