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The boat sank on the night of December 12, 1770 – since then its origin has been shrouded in mystery – it was initially thought to be part of the fabled Spanish Armada, but this has been ruled outThe mystery of the "Butter Boat" shipwreck has finally been solved 250 years after the ship sunk. After the remains of the boat were found off the coast of Ireland, its true origin has finally been discovered. The skeletal remains of the large vessel become visible when the low tide shifts – for years it has attracted curious tourists, reports The Mirror.....

Our ancient Irish ancestors carved images of an ancient eclipse into giant stones over 5,000 years ago, on November 30, 3340 BC to be exact. This is the oldest known recorded solar eclipse in history. The illustrations are found on the Stone Age "Cairn L," on Carbane West, at Loughcrew, outside Kells, in County Meath. The landscape of rolling hills is littered with Neolithic monuments. Some say that originally there were at least 40 to 50 monuments, but others say the figure was more like 100... Martin Brennan and Jack Roberts discovered that the sun illuminates this chamber on the...

"I lit three candles and stood awhile, to let my eyes accustom themselves to the dim light. There was everything, just as the last Bronze Age man (sic) had left it, three to four thousand years before. A light brownish dust covered all... There beads of stone, bone implements made from Red Deer antlers, and many fragments of much decayed pottery. On little raised recesses in the wall were flat stones, on which reposed the calcinated bones of young children." These are the words of R.S. Macalister who in 1911 was the first person in thousands of years to enter...

Archaeologists were stunned when the thousand-year-old skeleton of a young man was found among the roots of a tree ripped from the ground. Storms blew over a 215-year old beech tree outside Collooney, Sligo, Ireland, unearthing a human skeleton. The National Monuments Service commissioned Sligo-Leitrim archaeological consultancy Archaeological Services (SLAS) to excavate and retrieve the badly disturbed remains. The burial was that of a young man (17-20 years old) and it id believed he suffered a violent death during the early medieval period. Radiocarbon dating puts the man's death at 1030-1200 AD. Several injuries were visible to the ribs and...

Protestors burn the Israeli flag outside Leinster House during the Ireland Palestine demonstration in Dublin today. Photo: Matt Kavanagh A man attempted to set himself alight at a protest today in Dublin over the continued bombing of Gaza. The man, who appeared visibly distraught, set his arms and shoulders alight before onlookers managed to extinguish the flames. He was not seriously injured. The incident happened at around 1.45pm this afternoon at the Central Bank in Dublin where around 600 people had gathered to protest at Israeli attacks in Gaza. The protest continued without incident to Leinster House and finished this...

A KIDNEY was removed from the body of a 27-year-old Irish man who died from a drug overdose in Ibiza last August, the Sunday Tribune has learned. The Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed to the family of Finbarr Kelly that one of his kidneys was removed before his body was returned home to Ireland last August. His family had not given permission for such a procedure. The report of the autopsy carried out in Spain failed to record this information. Kelly, a business graduate from Sligo town, travelled to Playa d'en Bossa, Ibiza, last August with a group of 11...

The brutal murder of a 26-year-old Sligo man has led to speculation that the country town is fast becoming a crime capital. Cróna Esler investigates. When Hughie McGinley was shot on Grattan Street in Sligo on Thursday April 28, it wasn’t a simple mistake or an argument that got out of control. His assailant was not merely trying to teach him a lesson and he was not the victim of a practical joke that got out of hand. When Hughie was shot, his attacker had only one thing in mind…he wanted to kill the 26-year-old Sligo man. Hughie McGinley was...

Boomtime for ancient Ireland traced to Sligo 16 July 2004 Archaeologists are finally in agreement that the Megalithic period in Ireland 'boomed' between the years 4200BC and 3500BC. The date controversy over the Irish Megalithic period - most significantly characterised by the Carrowmore site in Sligo - was put to rest at an archaeology conference in Sligo. The findings of the conference have just been released even though it took place two years ago. The Carrowmore site has one of the largest concentrations of Megalithic tombs in Western Europe. It pre-dates the Newgrange and Boyne complex and is older than...

Belfast Telegraph > News Publication Date: 17 July 2003 5,000-year-old settlement found in Sligo By Anita Guidera THE Republic's largest Neolithic settlement dating back 5,000 years has been uncovered on a remote mountain - more than 100 years after the site was first mapped by archaeologists. A small team, led by Dr Stefan Bergh of the Department of Archaeology of NUI Galway, working on the plateau at Mullaghfarna, 250 feet above Lough Arrow, Co Sligo, discovered artefacts which link the site to the late Stone Age, 2,500 to 3,000 years before Christ. The existence of some of the 140 hut...