The legendary Pony Express lasted only 18 months.
Riders carried mail halfway across America in 10 days, but in October 1861 the telegraph linked the coasts, and two days later the company announced it would close.
The events
- Pony Express1860–1861 · St. Joseph, Missouri. From April 1860 Pony Express riders carried mail from Missouri to California in about 10 days, changing horses at relay stations. But in October 1861 the telegraph linked the coasts, and two days later the company announced its closure.
- Morse telegraph line1844 · Washington. On 24 May 1844 Samuel Morse sent the message "What hath God wrought" from the US Capitol to Baltimore. The electric telegraph let news travel faster than any messenger for the first time and soon wired whole continents together.
More amazing facts
- 1859 · 1869 Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) and Mendeleev's periodic law (1869) are just ten years apart.
- 1859 Big Ben is still regulated with old pennies.
- 1859 · 1872 The only casualty of the Pig War between the US and Britain was a pig. The border dispute that began with a farmer’s shot in 1859 dragged on for 13 years and was settled by an arbitrator: the German Kaiser.
- 1859 In 1859 telegraph operators sent messages without batteries; space supplied the power.
- 1859 In 1859 the aurora was so bright that gold miners in the Rocky Mountains woke in the night and began making breakfast, thinking it was morning.
- 1860 The oldest recording of a human voice was made in 1860 but first heard in 2008.