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The first bombing of Paris by a German aircraft kills two civilians - the first black-out is enforced in the city
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This mission was performed by Leutnant Ferdinand von Hiddessen, flying a Rumpler Taube. He dropped four small hand-held bombs weighing 5 pounds each, and a case full of leaflets. The papers read "The German Army stands before the gates of Paris. You can do nothing but surrender." Von Hiddessen would later be shot down and taken prisoner, but would survive the war and live until 1971.
Taube
A later painting of the event
As is common everywhere, the calling up of young men to war in Austria was not always popular:
"These simple, starving, bewildered lads and men, who have had nothing but misery all their lives, are being driven to their deaths, or crippled, and nobody gives a tuppeny damn about it afterwards. The streets are filling with pitiful women, who are already pale and ill, but still have the strength of soul not to let their menfolk see how it affects them. Today, in my street, there was a woman who fell on her husband's neck like one demented, because he was having to leave, carrying his few worldly goods in a piece of sacking. Yet the recruits are docile, and grateful for a friendly look"
-Oskar Kokoschka, painter, in a letter to a friend. Quoted from
The First World War, by Martin Gilbert, p.46
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Later that evening, heavy radoi traffic between allied warships was picked up. The vessel transmitting the most, was passing on orders for others to follow and signed off QMD. Muller assumed that it was the British armoured cruiser HAMPSHIRE.
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The first such message had been intercepted on the night of August 13. There was some debate about the identity of the sender. The officers of
Emden at first thought it was HMS
Minotaur. Only later did they decide it was likely
Hampshire, and they still weren't sure until they had been taken prisoner and had it confirmed by their captors.