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

However, his name was not removed from the overboard list and his family received a telegram that said Raymond was missing in action.

From BBC ● May 29, 2026

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

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2024

He had scouts everywhere—the moment a larger circus showed signs of trouble, Uncle Al would get a telegram and race to the scene.

From "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen

Officials said the message had left Downing Street correctly but blamed an error in transmission and suggested telegrams should be abandoned altogether.

From BBC ● Dec. 29, 2025

Stefansson’s telegrams to the dead men’s families are perfunctory.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2025

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

Every night he sends telegrams from the district office in Saint- Malo.

From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr

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

Hecht hailed from the quick-witted New York circles once frequented by Mankiewicz, who telegrammed his friend an oft-quoted invitation to Hollywood: “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots.”

From New York Times ● Dec. 4, 2020

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

President Wilson telegrammed Carrie Chapman Catt to congratulate her; he did not contact Alice Paul.

From "Votes for Women!" by Winifred Conkling

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