DEAR SAM STOP HELD ON LONG AS WE COULD STOP LOSING $ FAST STOP THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES STOP YOUR FRIENDS IN INDIA 

Samuel Morse had a good run, but it's all over but for the marginal service here and there kept alive for mostly novelty purposes.  Western Union abandoned its telegram service in the US in 2006; and this weekend India, bastion of the last great telegraphy service follows suit. It is not quite the end – heritage services continue in many places and telegrams are still used for specific purposes in some countries (in Argentina, you are supposed to resign from your job by telegram) – but the final STOP is looming.

Reading this story, it occurred to me that Twitter is the new Telegraph.  Short, mostly declarative messages designed to reach intended recipient with the greatest of ease and speed. Went searching for memorable or infamous telegrams and found a few familiar ones and a few surprises along the way.

"HOW OLD CARY GRANT?" a reporter cabled the actor. 

"OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?" he replied.

Victor Hugo was curious about sales of latest book so sent message "?" 
The publisher wired back: "!".

"EVERYTHING IS QUIET. THERE WILL BE NO WAR. I WISH TO RETURN," cabled Frederic Remington to newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst in 1897."YOU FURNISH THE PICTURES, AND I'LL FURNISH THE WAR," Hearst  (apocryphally?)  replied.... Print the legend.

The Champ to MLK in Birmingham County Jail.

 "STREETS FULL OF WATER. PLEASE ADVISE," cabled Robert Benchley to  New Yorker editor Harold Ross on his first trip to Venice. 

Australian comic writer Lennie Lower made use of the condensed form when resigning after an argument with the publishing company that ran his columns by writing: "UPSTICK JOB ARSEWISE". 

February 28th, 1946: Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam, writes to U.S. President Truman requesting support against French reconquest of Indochina after WWII.

March 9th, 1965: Jackie Robinson sent this telegram to President Lyndon B. Johnson, telling him to intervene in Selma, Alabama, where peaceful marchers were beaten and even clubbed to death by police.

Dorothy Parker wrote to her friend Mary Anderson (playwright Robert Anderson's wife) on occasion of birth of her baby: DEAR MARY, WE ALL KNEW YOU HAD IT IN YOU. 

Parker was also said to have wired her editor at The New Yorker who was pestering her for an overdue magazine piece while Parker was honeymooning in Europe:  TOO FUCKING BUSY AND VICE VERSA.

And finally, Samuel Morse sent what is thought to be the first telegram, on May 24 1844.  from Washington to Baltimore saying: