Hacker News

My first and last telegram was from Rebecca West(thelampmagazine.com)

38 points by bryanrasmussen 1 day ago | 10 comments

Back in 1999 I sent a telegram to my girlfriend as a quaint romantic gesture. As I recall, I sent about 30 characters and it cost around $50. Western Union stopped telegrams altogether a few years later.

It turns out that it is still possible to send mail to someone in the US by Pony Express: https://hashknifeponyexpress.com/about-us/ Currently waiting for the right moment with the right person for that particular gesture.

I've always enjoyed stories about what is on interesting scraps of paper found in old books. I think this is one of the things that future generations may not get to experience as much as digital literature pushes the hard copies out of the way. I love old books, and I suspect that someday someone may find a scrap of mine in one of my books. I just hope they find it as interesting as Nic Rowan did.

[–] pradn 1 day ago

Telegrams have a quaint connotation these days I suppose.

In old Indian movies, a Telegram would only arrive to signify really bad news - someone died, or something like that. Why else would you pay for that expense? Well, it could also be a job interview or posting. So the connotation there, in that time, was probably not so good.

[–] mikestew 1 day ago

In old Indian movies...

Old movies in general, Indian or Hollywood. For pretty much the reasons you list.

[–] bryanrasmussen 1 day ago

"Bad news! Or tries against our interests is our sole communications from strangers, so by all means, let's plant poles all across the country, festoon the cocksucker with wires to hurry the sorry word and blinker our judgments of motive, huh?"

-- Al Swearengen

[–] greasegum 1 day ago

I didn't realize RW was cold like that.

[–] buran77 1 day ago

> Not long ago I received my first and last telegram

> I found this telegram tucked into a passage on the Jewish community in Sarajevo [...] The recipient of the telegram was Ann Cottrell Free

I dare say he didn't receive, he found, and it's not his but someone else's telegram.

[–] ctoth 1 day ago

At the risk of being the LMGTFY guy:

https://claude.ai/share/b84c491e-3480-4407-ae76-b6cf63ee551d

[–] mrandish 1 day ago

> At the risk of being the LMGTFY guy

That was actually great. While a Google search is free and easy, that cost real tokens which aren't free (especially for those who don't have a work-paid sub).

[–] readthenotes1 18 hours ago

Wow! The twists and turns. Married to her uncle??

[–] swiftcoder 1 day ago

This is at least an interesting use of tokens