• The Students' Representative Council (SRC) late in 1915 recommended to the University Council that Robert Menzies should be the 1916 Editor of the Melbourne University Magazine. He wrote many articles for the magazine including the following verse:

In Memoriam
Lieut. J.R. Balfe
Killed in Action, Gallipoli, July 1915

His was the call that came from far away -
An Empire's message flashing o'er the sea -
The call to arms! The blood of chivalry
Pulsed quicker in his veins; he could not stay!
Let others wait; for him the glorious day
Of tyrants humbled and a world set free
Had dawned in clouds and thunder; with a glee
Born not of insensate madness for the fray,
But rather of a spirit noble, brave,
And kindled by a heart that wept at wrong,
He went. The storms of battle round him rave
And screaming fury o'er him chants its song,
Sleep, gallant soul! Though gone thy living breath,
Thou liv'st for aye, for thou has conquered death!"
By R G Menzies

This and other verses are published in
Sir Robert Menzies, 1894-1978 - a new, informal memoir,
Sir Percy Joske,1978 p 15.

• ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) and Allied troops land on April 25 on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey and immediately encounter stout resistance. 8,700 Australians die and 19,000 are wounded in the eight month campaign.
• Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick, aged 22, dies from a gunshot wound to the heart. Simpson is a hero of Gallipoli where he and his donkey "Duffy" carried many injured men through shrapnel and rifle-fire to safety.
• Hughes Government, October 27. (see Australian Prime Ministers)
• William Lawrence Bragg with his father William Henry Bragg create the new science of x-ray crystallography which earns them the Nobel Prize for Physics 'for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays'. Born in Adelaide in 1890, Lawrence gained a degree in mathematics at Adelaide University before studying at Cambridge. Lawrence Bragg becomes the youngest male Nobel Laureate at 25 years of age.
• C J Dennis publishes The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke.
• Melbourne pharmacist George Nicholas develops Aspro.

• The passenger liner Lusitania is sunk off the Irish coast by a German U-boat. Hit by two torpedos, the ship sank in less than 20 minutes with the loss of 1198 persons.
• Italy enters the war on the Allied side.
• Poison gas and flame-throwers are used on the war front.
• Einstein publishes his "General Theory of Relativity".