the composer Enrique Granados), resulting on May 4 in the Sussex Pledge by Germany to the United States, suspending its intensified submarine warfare policy. April April The toggle light switch is invented, by William J. Newton and Morris Goldberg. Korea Tungsten was founded in Daegu, as predecessor of leading steel product in Asia, POSCO (Pohang Steel Company). April 11 – WWI: The Egyptian Expeditionary Force begins the occupation of the Sinai Peninsula. April 22 – The Chinese troop transport capsizes off the Chinese coast; at least 1,000 are killed. April 24–30 – The Easter Rising occurs in Ireland. Members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood proclaim an Irish Republic, and the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army occupy the General Post Office and other buildings in Dublin, before surrendering to the British Army. April 24–May 10 – Voyage of the James Caird: An open boat journey from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands to South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean () is undertaken by Sir Ernest Shackleton and five companions, to obtain rescue for the main body of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, following the loss of its ship Endurance. April 27 – WWI: Gas attack at Hulluch in France: The 47th Brigade, 16th (Irish) Division is decimated, in one of the most heavily concentrated German gas attacks of the war. April 29 – WWI: Mesopotamian campaign – The Siege of Kut ends with the surrender of British Indian Army forces to the Ottoman Empire at Kut-al-Amara on the Tigris in Basra Vilayet. May May 16 United States Marines invade the Dominican Republic. Britain and France conclude the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement, which is to divide Arab areas of the Ottoman Empire, following the conclusion of WWI and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, into French and British spheres of influence. May 31–June 1 – WWI: Battle of Jutland, between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet in the North Sea, the war's only large-scale clash of battleships. The result is tactically inconclusive, but British dominance of the North Sea is maintained. June June 4 – WWI: The Brusilov Offensive, the height of Russian operations in the war, begins with their breaking through Austro-Hungarian lines. June 5 – WWI: sinks, having hit a mine off the Orkney Islands, Scotland, with Lord Kitchener aboard. June 10: The Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, to create