On this day in 1869, officials of the Union Pacific Railroad drove the symbolic "Golden Spike" to mark the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Telegraph wires attached to the spike and sledgehammer carried the news across the country. Reporters compared the event to the first shot fired on Lexington Green. Back in Boston, Oliver and Oakes Ames, the Massachusetts men who had been instrumental in the success of the six-year project, accepted congratulations. The owners of the world's largest shovel manufacturing company, the brothers had supplied many of the tools used to build the railroad. They had also arranged much of the financing. When the details of those arrangements were revealed, their reputations were ruined in one of the greatest financial scandals in U.S. history.