British hospital ship Glenart Castle. Image courtesy http://www.histarmar.com.ar/ArchivoFotosGral-2/VaporesSACarrioin/126.JPG
- At 3am Australian Artillery units on the Western Front launch 4,000 artillery shells onto Malt Trench. The 17th, 26th and 28th Battalions cross into no-man’s land; the 26th finds a gap in the wire, enters enemy territory and captures a German machine-gun post.
- The British hospital ship Glenart Castle sustains serious damage when it strikes a mine in the English Channel en route from Le Havre to Southampton. The 520 sick and wounded on board are saved by other vessels in the area; and the damaged vessel towed into Portsmouth. The hospital ship was torpedoed and sunk in February 1918.
- British General Headquarters reports the capture of 2,133 German prisoners and 11 villages on the Western Front during the month of February
- Six people are injured during an aeroplane raid at Broadstairs on the Kent coast
- Arz von Straussenburg replaces Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf as Austro-Hungarian Chief of Staff
- American President, Woodrow Wilson, approves the publication of the contents of the Zimmerman telegram in US newspapers. The coded telegram from German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann to the German Ambassador to Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt, was intercepted by British intelligence on 19 January and subsequently decoded, revealing that Von Eckardt had been instructed to negotiate a military alliance with Mexico against the United States, offering US territory to Mexico in exchange for joining the German cause. Zimmermann Telegram Published in United States
