Irish-Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi ushered in a new era of
global communications, sending the first radio transmission
across the Atlantic Ocean on this day in history, Dec. 12, 1901.

The message was the letter "s" in Morse code (dot-dot-dot). But
it proved after years of advances by Marconi that radio could
make the world a smaller place.

The wireless signal traveled 2,000 miles from a transmitting
station in Poldhu, Cornwall, in the far southwestern corner of
England, to a receiving station in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi
(25 April 1874 – 20 July 1937)