Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Irish scribes—living in remote outposts like the Skellig Islands just off this
coast—kept literate life alive in Europe through the darkest depths of the so-called
Dark Ages. In fact, in about the year 800, Charlemagne imported monks from this
part of Ireland to be his scribes.
Just more than a thousand years later, in the mid-19th century, Paul Julius Reu-
ter—who provided a financial news service in Europe—knew his pigeons couldn't
fly across the Atlantic. So he relied on ships coming from America to drop a news
capsule overboard as they rounded this southwest corner of Ireland. His boys would
wait in their little boats with nets to “get the scoop.” They say Europe learned of
Lincoln's assassination (1865) from a capsule tossed out of a boat here.
The first permanent telegraph cables were laid across the Atlantic from here to
Newfoundland, giving the two hemispheres instantaneous electronic communica-
tion. Queen Victoria was the first to send a message—greeting American presid-
ent James Buchanan in 1858. The cable broke more than once, but it was finally
permanently secured in 1866. Radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi achieved the first
wireless transatlantic communication from this corner of Ireland to America in
1901.
Today,drivingunderthe21st-centurymobile-phoneandsatellitetowercrowning
a hilltop above Valentia Island while gazing out at the Skellig Islands, a traveler
marvels at humanity's progress—and the part this remote corner of Ireland played
in it.
Cost and Hours: €3.50, daily April-Sept 11:00-17:00, closed Oct-March, tel. 066/
947-6411, www.vhc.cablehistory.org .
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