May 27, 1999 - 
This article on Tesla was printed in The New York Times, December 8, 1915. 
NEW YORK TIMES - December 8, 1915: 
"Nikola Tesla, the inventor, has filed patent applications on the essential parts of a machine the possibilities of which test a layman's imagination and promise a parallel of Thor's shooting thunderbolts from the sky to punish those who had angered the gods. Suffice it to say that the invention will go through space with a speed of 300 MILES PER SECOND, a manless ship without propelling engine or wings, sent by electricity to any desired point on the globe on its errand of destruction, if destruction its manipulator wishes to effect." 
[that is 18,000 miles per minute which is around our globe in under a minute and a half - or aimed directly through the globe - as most of Testla's patents were claimed to do - in 27 seconds. beth] 
"'It is not a time,' said Dr. Tesla yesterday, 'to go into the details of this thing. It is founded upon a principle that means great things in peace; it can be used for great things in war. But I repeat, this is no time to talk of such things.'