The question, taken from the Bible (Numbers 23:23), had been
suggested to Morse by Annie Ellworth, the daughter of the 
commissioner of patents.

Annie G. Ellsworth

On this day in 1838, Samuel Morse’s telegraph was demonstrated
for the first time at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, New
Jersey. The telegraph, a device which used electric impulses to transmit
encoded messages over a wire, would eventually revolutionize
long-distance communication, reaching the height of its popularity
in the 1920s and 1930s.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse
(April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872)

Nancy Kerrigan cries in pain after the attack.

Former figure skater Nancy Kerrigan (above) was clubber on her right leg
by an assailant on this day in 1994. The attacker was hired by the ex-
husband of her rival Tonya Harding.  Four men were later sentenced to
prison for the attack, including Harding’s ex-husband.

Nancy Kerrigan turned 50 last October.

Tonya Maxene Price (née Harding) became 49 in
November.

ROSS SIMPSON

Bob Dylan (Robert Allen Zimmerman)

Legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan revolutionized
folk music in the 1960’s with albums such as The
Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited, and
Blonde on Blonde and songs such as "The Times
They Are a-Changin’," "Like a Rolling Stone," and
"Positively 4th Street."

Bob Dylan was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Alexander Graham Bell  (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) at
the opening of the long-distance line from New York to
Chicago in 1892.

On this day in 1876, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for
his revolutionary new invention…the telephone.

The Scottish-born Bell worked in London with his father, Melville Bell, who developed Visible Speech, a written system used to teach speaking to the
deaf. In the 1870s, the Bells moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where the
younger Bell found work as a teacher at the Pemberton Avenue School for
the Deaf.

While in Boston, Bell became very interested in the possibility of transmitting speech over wires. Samuel F.B. Morse’s invention of the telegraph in 1843 made communication possible between two distant points and Bell, wanting to
improve on this, created a “harmonic telegraph,” a device that combined
aspects of the telegraph and record player to allow individuals to speak to
each other from a distance.
 

With the help of Thomas A. Watson, a Boston machine shop employee, Bell developed a prototype of his first telephone. Three days after filing the patent,
the telephone carried its first intelligible message–the famous “Mr. Watson,
come here, I need you”–from Bell to his assistant. (A&E Television)

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone patent drawing, March 7, 1876.