The Daily Colonist, July 13–14, 1915
Sat, 2015/08/08 - 9:15am
« previous next »#dailycolonist1915 - The news out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago:
[In a mere two days we have genocide, secret agents, conspiracy, awards from the king, real technology that reads like steampunk fiction and a new university. ]
- Tuesday, July 13, 1915
- Christians, mostly Armenians, are being displaced and slaughtered in the Ottoman Empire [this will later be known as the Armenian Genocide and continues in the post-war republic of Turkey.]
- A ceremony is held at Buckingham Palace, attended by the entire Court, with King George V presenting military awards.
- Five Canadian officers are honoured with titles bestowed by the king.
- An interesting little article on how seized German tankers are ingeniously outfitted as unsinkable ferries to carry troops across the English Channel.
- The University of British Columbia is to open this fall despite the decision to scale-back construction due to the war. While the site has been cleared and some construction at the Point Grey campus has started, modest and temporary facilities along with the transfer of resources from the Vancouver and Victoria facilities of McGill University College will get the university started.
- Wednesday, July 14, 1915
- The Germans have deployed a deadly electric fence to prevent Belgian refugees from crossing into Holland.
- Germans are reported to have developed an aerial torpedo guided by Hertzian waves [from the description in the article, more or less an radio-controlled explosive mini-Zeppelin] in order to overcome the difficulties in accurate bombing from Zeppelins. "The new aerial weapon obtains its buoyancy through the medium of water gas and compressed air gas" ["water gas" is a mix of hydrogen and carbon monoxide created by injecting steam into a coke furnace] And, apparently, the currently employed makeshift measure for accurately dropping bombs this supersedes is lowering a guy on a really long rope!
- Going back to the unexploded bombs found on ships out of New York reported on the 8th, the United States is investigating: "Secret agents are co-operating with the police of practically every Eastern and Southern city in an effort to run down what is believed to be a conspiracy, titanic in its scope, to destroy freight steamers clearing from American ports for England and France."
[ source: http://www.britishcolonist.ca/dateList.php?year=1915 ]
