May Events in History | First Long Distance Telegraph Message Is Sent #mayhistory #thisdayinhistory

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]May 24, 1844. The first long-distance telegraph message is sent in a test of the telegraph line that ran from Washington D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland.

[00:00:09]American inventor Samuel Morse sent the telegraph message "What hath God wrought?" The famous phrase was actually chosen by Annie Ellsworth, the young daughter of the U.S. patent commissioner, who selected the biblical phrase Numbers 23:23 to reflect her and Morse's devout belief that God was working through the inventor to gift humankind a miraculous new communications tool.