At 2:20 this afternoon, Washington time, all the telegraph offices in the country were notified by the Omaha telegraph office to be ready to receive the signals corresponding to the blows of the hammer that drove the last spike in the last rail that united New York and San Francisco with a band of iron.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0510.html



btw, interesting to note the apposition of 'Europe' and 'Asia' as descriptions.