Mondo Knows Facts
A submarine cable joined Europe and America in 1866
Messages that once took ten days by ship now arrived in minutes An 1858 cable carried a few messages before failing, and a second attempt in 1865 snapped at sea. In 1866 the steamship Great Eastern laid a working cable from Ireland to Newfoundland, and a fresh line was recovered from the 1865 failure. Telegraph traffic between continents became routine, changing news and finance. It sits in Mondo's history collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
Go further
More facts like this
Morse sent the first public telegraph messageA line from Washington to Baltimore carried a short biblical line in May 1844Chappe's semaphore network spanned FranceMovable arms on hilltop towers carried messages faster than any riderThe Penny Black was the first adhesive postage stampRowland Hill's flat rate penny post went on sale in May 1840Samuel Morse sent the first long-distance telegraph message in 1844The message What hath God wrought travelled over wires between Washington and BaltimoreThe first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid across the ocean floor in 1858Queen Victoria and President James Buchanan exchanged telegrams across the Atlantic OceanThe electric telegraph was first deployed commercially along British railwaysWilliam Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone installed telegraph lines along track tracks in 1837
๐๏ธ Historyfact 159 of 200
โ โ to keep reading, or swipe
Tags: telegraph, cables, communication
A submarine cable joined Europe and America in 1866: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Messages that once took ten days by ship now arrived in minutes. The figure is taken from Science Museum, London, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a history fact?
- Yes. It sits on the History shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.