Wednesday · November 11, 2026
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The events of October 24 · Read the full edition → · More from October 24 →
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Wires meet at Salt Lake City; California wires Lincoln its loyalty

Crews building east and west close the final gap, and Chief Justice Stephen Field sends the first coast-to-coast message of the war.

For eleven years, California had been a state reachable only by sea, overland mail, or the Pony Express. On October 24, 1861, crews laying wire eastward from Nevada and westward from Nebraska joined their lines in Utah, completing the first transcontinental telegraph. Brigham Young sent the initial message to Overland Telegraph president H. W. Carpentier. That same day, California Chief Justice Stephen J. Field wired President Lincoln from San Francisco, pledging the state's support for the Union…

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More from October 24
1946

A camera rides a captured Nazi rocket 65 miles up and photographs the curve of the Earth

The rocket smashed into the New Mexico desert, but the film survived.
1900

Washington says it will buy the Danish West Indies for $7 million

The second American attempt in three decades to take the islands, this time with the Caribbean suddenly a strategic priority.
1944

Musashi rolls over and sinks after waves of American carrier strikes

Nineteen torpedoes and seventeen bombs were enough to capsize the heaviest battleship ever built.
19571776 Club
Three rival hypersonic studies are folded into Weapon System 464L, a winged spacecraft meant to succeed the X-15.
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Read the full October 24 edition →Everything that happened on October 24 →
More from Civil War & Reconstruction
1863

Lee turns south; 12,500 men sent across an open mile are thrown back, and the Army of Northern Virginia retreats

The assault on Cemetery Ridge collapsed under Union artillery and rifle fire before it reached the line; survivors streamed back across the same field.
1863

Gardner surrenders Port Hudson; the Union holds the Mississippi from source to sea

After 48 days on the bluff, half his men sick and the food gone, the Confederate general yields the last rebel stronghold on the river.
1868

Seward proclaims it law: the Fourteenth Amendment is part of the Constitution

The amendment settles in the document what Dred Scott left open, granting citizenship and equal protection to anyone born on American soil.
1862

Lincoln signs a Medal of Honor into law; the Army has no decoration for valor until today

Congress authorizes the medal for enlisted men who show gallantry in action; the War Department will contract for 2,000 to be struck.
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