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Top Song(s)
• American Quartet - Over There
• Original Dixieland Jazz Band - At the Darktown Strutter's Ball
• Victor Military Band - Poor Butterfly
• Elsie Baker - Missouri Waltz (Hush-a-Bye, Ma Baby)
• John McCormack - Send Me Away with a Smile
Top Film(s)
• The Immigrant
• Easy Street
• The Adventurer
• The Cure
• A Man There Was
Best Selling Book(s)
• Anne's House of Dreams - L.M. Montgomery
• Understood Betsy - Dorothy Canfield Fisher
• The Lost Princess of Oz - L. Frank Baum
• Summer - Edith Wharton
• Parnassus on Wheels - Christopher Morley
Famous Deaths
• January 29 – Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer, British diplomat and colonial administrator.
• March 8 – Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German general and inventor.
• April 3 – Milton Wright, American bishop, father of the Wright brothers.
• May 7 – Albert Ball, British World War I fighter ace, posthumous Victoria Cross recipient.
• June 14 – Thomas W. Benoist, American aviator, aircraft designer and manufacturer.
• July 2 - William Henry Moody, 35th United States Secretary of the Navy, 45th United States Attorney General.
• August 13 – Eduard Buchner, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate.
• September 23 – Werner Voss, German World War I fighter ace.
• December 12 – Andrew Taylor Still, American father of osteopathy.
• December 17 – Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, English physician and suffragette.
Medical/Science/Technology
• D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's On Growth and Form is published.
• Shinobu Ishihara publishes his color perception test.
• Albert Einstein introduces the idea of stimulated radiation emission.
• Release in the United States of the first film made in Technicolor System 1, a two-color process.
• Alvin D. and Kelvin Keech introduce the "banjulele-banjo", an early form of the banjolele.
• Gilbert Vernam jointly reinvents the one-time pad encryption system.
• Ernest Rutherford (at the Victoria University of Manchester) achieves nuclear transmutation.
• Julius Wagner-Jauregg discovers malarial pyrotherapy for general paresis of the insane.
• Paul Ehrenfest gives a conditional principle for a three-dimensional space.
• French-Canadian microbiologist Felix d'Herelle, announces his discovery of a bacteriophage.
Political Events
• January 16 – The Danish West Indies is sold to the United States for $25 million (equivalent to $595 million in 2023).
• January 22 – United States President Woodrow Wilson calls for "peace without victory" in Germany.
• February 3 – The United States severs diplomatic relations with Germany.
• March 1 - The U.S. government releases the text of the Zimmermann Telegram to the public.
• March 4 - Woodrow Wilson is sworn in for a second term, as President of the United States.
• March 4 - Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman member of the United States House of Representatives.
• April 2 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson asks the United States Congress for a declaration of war on Germany.
• April 6 – The United States declares war on Germany.
• May 18 – The Selective Service Act passes the United States Congress, giving the President the power of conscription.
• May 22 - The Commissioned Officer Corps of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey is established.
National Events
• January 10 - Suffragettes the "Silent Sentinels" first protest outside The White House.
• January 11 – Unknown saboteurs set off the Kingsland Explosion at Kingsland (modern-day Lyndhurst, New Jersey).
• January 17 - US pays Denmark $25 million for Virgin Islands.
• May 26 – A tornado strikes Mattoon, Illinois, causing devastation and killing 101 people.
• June 15 – The United States enacts the Espionage Act.
• July 1–3 – A labor dispute ignites a race riot in East St. Louis, Illinois, which leaves 250 dead.
• July 7 – The Lions Clubs International is formed in the United States.
• August 2–3 – The Green Corn Rebellion, an uprising by farmers against the WWI draft, takes place in central Oklahoma.
• August 5 - The US National Guard is taken into national service, subject to presidential rather than state control.
• August 18 - The Queen's Hospital opens to provide pioneering plastic surgery for WWI soldiers.
Worldwide Events
• January 9 – The last substantial Ottoman Army garrison on the Sinai Peninsula is captured by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.
• February 1 – Germany announces its U-boats will resume unrestricted submarine warfare, rescinding the 'Sussex Pledge'.
• March 8 – The February Revolution begins in Russia: Women calling for bread in Petrograd start riots.
• March 14 – The Republic of China terminates diplomatic relations with Germany.
• May 3 – 1917 French Army mutinies begin.
• June 11 – King Constantine I of Greece abdicates for the first time, being succeeded by his son Alexander.
• July 25 – Sir William Thomas White introduces Canada's first income tax as a "temporary" measure.
• August 14 – The Republic of China declares war on Germany and Austria-Hungary.
• September 14 – Russia is declared a republic by the Provisional Government.
• October 23 – A Brazilian ship is destroyed by a German U-boat, encouraging Brazil to enter World War I.