On New Year’s Eve 1917, Scottish soldiers stationed in South Africa sent an encrypted message to the British Army’s field headquarters. It was a Happy New Year message in Gaelic. It took the codebreakers hours to solve. The high command were not amused…
Dundee Courier. 16th Jan 1917. pg. 3
After a rainstorm in December 1916, South Uist awoke to find their white cattle turned completely black. The rains had coated everything on the island with “a strange black dust like burnt gunpowder”.
The press gave no explanation at the time as to what the source of the strange “burnt gunpowder”. Suggestions from Twitter followers were industrial pollution from the Central Belt and battle dust from the fighting in France. The winds were strong from the Southeast that night so both ideas are plausible.