telegram

At the time, the Tana family was vacationing on a remote Yugoslav island when a telegram arrived: “The restaurant burned down. Call me, Pearl,” recalls Katerina Tana, one of Dan Tana’s daughters.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026

Within hours of carrying the first telegram across the English Channel in 1850, the earliest “submarine telegraph”—27 miles of copper wire wrapped in a rubbery substance called gutta percha—was broken by a fishing trawler.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 4, 2026

A British businessman fast running out of cash, William Knox D'Arcy, is said to have uttered those words when he received a telegram from Persia, 113 years ago.

From BBC ● Jun. 21, 2025

His family had to wait almost two weeks before a telegram arrived, addressed to his mother.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2024

Dr. Bangs came twice a day, Hannah sat up at night, Meg kept a telegram in her desk all ready to send off at any minute, and Jo never stirred from Beth’s side.

From "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott

There, Susan met Giorgos Xenarios, a goldsmith and jewelry maker 27 years her senior who, after many love letters, telegrams, intercontinental trips and one very firm ultimatum, migrated to the U.S. in 1974.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2025

Robert Hudson, from Leyton, east London, started his career in December 1964 - aged 16 – as a messenger in the Whitechapel Delivery Office distributing telegrams.

From BBC ● Dec. 27, 2024

At its center, a young, unnamed telegraph operator watches as the beautiful, married Lady Bradeen sends flurries of telegrams, hoping that no one will notice the messages to the dashing Captain Everard.

From Slate ● May 27, 2024

“I’ve gotten thousands of letters and telegrams from people supporting me.”

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 11, 2024

The Western Union office in San Francisco was overwhelmed with hundreds of congratulatory telegrams for the Howards, including those from Bing Crosby, A1 Jolson, and Fred Astaire.

From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand

Toward the end of 1926, Herman Mankiewicz, the screenwriter who would co-father “Citizen Kane,” telegrammed his friend Ben Hecht, the newspaperman who was finding himself between gigs and behind on his rent.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 2023

Nesbit had a serious relationship with the author Donald Barthelme before she married Gilman, and one day, Barthelme telegrammed her from Europe.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 14, 2023

“Hold your hand out you silly girl,” McCartney telegrammed one music critic, Penny Valentine, quoting the Beatles’ “Martha My Dear,” after she called his first solo album “a bitter disappointment.”

From New York Times ● Dec. 6, 2022

At one point, after the mega-success of the "Ringo" LP, no less than John Lennon famously telegrammed Starr, saying “Congratulations. How dare you? And please write me a hit song.”

From Salon ● Oct. 25, 2019

But my mother had telegrammed back, "No, it is Esther's writing. She thinks she will never write again."

From "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath

In 1916, Charles Evans Hughes waited two weeks before telegramming his concession to Woodrow Wilson, who noted that the message was “a little moth-eaten when it got here but quite legible.”

From Slate ● Nov. 7, 2012