Hughes is expelled from the Labor Party, over his support for conscription. November 18 – WWI – Battle of the Somme: In France, British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle, which started on July 1. November 21 Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria dies of pneumonia at the Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna, aged 86, after a reign of 68 years and is succeeded by his grandnephew Charles I. WWI: Hospital ship HMHS Britannic, designed as the third for White Star Line, sinks in the Kea Channel of the Aegean Sea after hitting a mine; 30 lives are lost. At 48,158 gross register tons, she is the largest ship lost during the war. November 23 – WWI: Eastern Front – Bucharest, the capital of Romania, is occupied by troops of the Central Powers. December December 12 – "White Friday": In the Dolomites, 100 avalanches bury 18,000 Austrian and Italian soldiers. December 16 – Robert Baden-Powell gives the first public display of the new Wolf Cub section of Scouting at Caxton Hall, Westminster. December 18 – WWI: The Battle of Verdun ends in France with German troops defeated. December 21 – WWI: El Arish occupied by the British Empire Desert Column during advance across the Sinai Peninsula. December 22 – The British Sopwith Camel aircraft makes its maiden flight. It is designed to counter the German Fokker aircraft. December 23 – WWI: The Desert Column captures the Ottoman garrison during the Battle of Magdhaba. December 30 Humberto Gómez and his mercenaries seize Arauca in Colombia and declare the Republic of Arauca. He proceeds to pillage the region before fleeing to Venezuela. (December 17 Old Style) – The mystic Grigori Rasputin is murdered in Saint Petersburg. December 31 – The Hampton Terrace Hotel in North Augusta, South Carolina, one of the largest and most luxurious hotels in the United States at the time, burns to the ground. Date unknown The 1916 Summer Olympics are cancelled in Berlin, Germany. Food is rationed in Germany. Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale is collected posthumously and published. Oxycodone, a narcotic painkiller closely related to codeine, is first synthesized in Germany. Ernst Rüdin publishes his initial results on the genetics of schizophrenia. Louis Enricht claims he has a substitute for gasoline. Rodeo's first side-delivery bucking chute is designed and made by the Bascom brothers (Raymond, Mel, and Earl) and their father, John W. Bascom,