DanDiplo/UmbracoTraceLogViewer — pull request #3 by nul800sebastiaan (2014-09-15 15:42:27+00:00)
Title: Should fix "UTF-8 file with BOM causes DateTime.Parse to fail"

See: http://our.umbraco.org/projects/developer-tools/diplo-trace-log-viewer/diplo-trace-log-viewer/56620-UTF-8-file-with-BOM-causes-DateTimeParse-to-fail
I couldn't reproduce the original issue but if it helps someone then there's no harm in stripping these evil characters ;)