one
     o'clock
By this time , however , an important dispatch was flying east , bearing four different addresses : To the Secretary of the U.S. Navy , Washington ; To Colonel Joseph Wilcox , Vice-President _ pro tem . _ , Baltimore Gun Club , Md ; To J.T. Marston , Esq. . Long 's Peak , Grand County , Colorado ; and To Professor Wenlock , Sub-Director of the Cambridge Observatory , Mass. . This dispatch read as follows : `` In latitude twenty-seven degrees seven minutes north and longitude forty-one degrees thirty-seven minutes west shortly after one o'clock on the morning of twelfth instant Columbiad Projectile fell in Pacific -- send instructions -- BLOOMSBURY , _ Captain _ , SUSQUEHANNA . '' In five minutes more all San Francisco had the news . An hour later , the newspaper boys were shrieking it through the great cities of the States . Before bed-time every man , woman , and child in the country had heard it and gone into ecstasies over it .