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

The author sent a telegram to his mother back home in French-controlled Algeria: “I’ve never missed you so much.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 8, 2026

The papers also reveal Downing Street was forced to apologise after then-Prime Minister John Major's birthday telegram to the Queen Mother in 1994 was addressed in an "improper manner".

From BBC ● Dec. 29, 2025

“The Queen and Elton John sent me a telegram of congratulations - my mum and dad were interviewed all week - it was a big thing.”

From BBC ● Oct. 30, 2024

A reply telegram insisted, “You must be here by Monday night …” repeating, “It is of vital importance.”

From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock

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

Other lots included telegrams from the late Duke of Edinburgh and letters from Margaret Thatcher and fellow comics Ronnie Barker and Tommy Cooper.

From BBC ● Jan. 11, 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

According to the telegrams, the Vatican embassy sent what U.S. churches had collected from the American faithful, down to the cents: $210,400.09, allowing the vote that eventually elected Pope Pius XI.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 19, 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

“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

The day before, he had telegrammed President Kennedy and listed twenty different, racially motivated, unpunished actions taken by white men against black people in Birmingham.

From "While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement" by Carolyn Maull McKinstry

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