reading variable length lines from a file

Lines in my files are not of the same length. However the date is always first.
For a while

fscanf(file, "%s %s \n", date, therest);

worked in that everything past the date was dumped into therest. I don't know what I did but it doesn't work anymore.

How do I read the first element of every line, independent of what follows?

 

Thanks.