• Begins Law Degree at University of Melbourne after winning a State Scholarship and English Exhibition.

"His hard work and ability won him an exhibition for university study, and he entered Melbourne University in 1913 to study Law. By this time politics was becoming a family tradition: his uncle was a federal MP and his father had been elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly."
Video script Menzies in his time, 1994.

• January: First Commonwealth of Australia postage stamp is issued. It features a kangaroo.
• March 12: Canberra is named - politicians and official guests witness the Governor-General, Lord Denman, laying the foundation stone of a federal capital column. Shortly after Lady Denman said: "I name this capital of Australia Canberra". Other suggestions for the capital's name were Shakespeare and Sydmeladlperbriho.
• Cook Government, June 24. (see Australian Prime Ministers)
• Basic wage is now 8/- per day.
• Royal Australian Navy takes delivery of its first ships.

• Anti-German riots in Alsace-Lorraine.
• Third Irish Home Rule Bill is rejected by House of Lords; threat of civil war in Ireland, formation of private Protestant army (Ulster Volunteers) to oppose Home Rule.
• Suffragette demonstrations in London - Mrs Pankhurst is imprisoned.
• Geiger invents his counter to measure radioactivity.
• George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion is published.
• D H Lawrence writes Sons and Lovers.