The First Email?

Derry is the second city of Northern Ireland, after Belfast, but is glazed with no less the ambition in its history. It claims, among other accomplishments, to have fired the first email?in a cannon. Michael Cooper, a local guide, shows off an iron 270 lb. mortar cannonball, on a stand, with a hollowed out shaft, like the thumbhole in a bowling ball, where James the II (the converted Roman Catholic monarch who abdicated the throne to his Protestant son-in-law) inserted his message containing terms of surrender, which he shot across the river and over the walls. ?No surrender? was the legendary reply, and the phrase has been the Protestant slogan ever since. And, it spawned a suggestion for a compromise coinage for the divided city, in use today by progressive locals: ?Legenderry.?