#dailycolonist1914 - News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today:

• Heavy fighting on the Western Front reported. Allied forces have retaken Dixmude. Report also includes story of some pretty ballsy French soldiers that crept out at night, tied strings to a makeshift German tripwire alarm of bells and empty cans, then, safely back in their own trench, set off the alarm by pulling the strings until the Germans exhausted their ammunition, and subsequently took the German position.
• Fierce attack by crack Prussian troops breaks the Allied line at three points, but is eventually repulsed. 700 dead counted in one trench alone.
• German casualties at Yser estimated at 90,000 [by way of comparison, that is roughly equivalent to *everyone* living in North Van today.]
• Four allied aeroplanes engage four German aeroplanes over Ypres. This is the largest aerial battle I've seen reported so far.
• Russian troops capture two German aviators, who were forced to land by engine trouble.
• Publication of detailed weather reports has been banned in France as the information is useful to the Germans. It is only allowed to report temperature predictions.
• And on the subject of weather, it has snowed in Calgary. This is inexplicably on the front page of a Victoria newspaper.
• Second Canadian expeditionary force now mobilizing. 15,272 men to be dispatched.
• Trans Indian Ocean cable station at the Cocos Island attacked by the German cruiser Emden. Cable station is destroyed but cable is not cut. Emden is chased off by Australian cruiser Sydney. [The Cocos Islands (a.k.a. Keeling Islands) are midway between Australia and Celon (Sri Lanka). If you have ever visited a site with a .cc top-level domain, the CC is the two-letter ISO 3166 code for Cocos Islands. Selling domain names is one of their primary industries these days after tourism. Britain transferred administration of the islands to Australia in 1955.]
• The Mexican civil war is back to open warfare.
• Ad illustrations that caught my eye.