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25.01.2022 For Harry Lauders birthday heres a song, Just A Wee Deoch & Doris" recorded in 1912, which means a little drink for the road before we part. My favourite line is "its a braw bright moonlict nicht Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRjyLbSDJz8 Just A Wee Deoch & Doris

25.01.2022 6 August 1881: The birth of Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin Today’s story is about the man who discovered Penicillin, helping to save millions of lives. Alexander Fleming was born at a farm near Darvel in Ayrshire in 1881. He earned a two-year scholarship to Kilmarnock Academy and then attended the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London. At twenty an inheritance from his uncle enabled him to start studying medicine at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School. Alexan...der was awarded a degree with distinctions in 1906. Whilst studying he had been a member of the St Mary’s Hospital rifle club. The captain of the club wanted to keep Fleming on the medical school’s team, so he encouraged him to get a job in the research department under the bacteriologist, Sir Almroth Wright, who was a pioneer in the study of immunology and vaccines. This decision took the young man down the path that led to his greatest work. Fleming took a degree in Science, majoring in Bacteriology, and then worked as a lecturer at the medical school until 1914, when he entered the Royal Army Medical Corps during WW1. After the war Fleming returned to St Mary’s and was appointed Professor of Bacteriology in 1928. He had first started thinking about the nature of infection during his time in France trying to save wounded soldiers who often died of sepsis. Back at St Mary’s he started investigating substances with antibacterial action. His first big discovery was lysozyme, an enzyme that helps to stop bacterial growth. The work was an important part of understanding immunity since lysozyme also interacts to enhance the actions of many of the body’s immune cells. Fleming’s biggest discovery, the antibiotic Penicillin, came about by a happy accident. He had been working with the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus and had left petri dishes containing the strain on a bench in his lab while he went on holiday. When he returned, he noticed that one dish had been contaminated with a fungus and that the bacteria immediately around it had been destroyed. The fungus was identified as Penicillium which Fleming isolated and grew in a broth which he found was antibacterial against many other types of bacteria. He eventually renamed his ‘mould juice’ Penicillin. The scientists Howard Florey and Ernest Boris Chain went on to discover how to mass produce Penicillin in 1944. The three of them received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945 for their work on the antibiotic. Fleming was knighted in 1944 by King George 6th. He died in London of a heart attack in 1955 at the age of 73. His ashes are buried in St Paul’s Cathedral. See more

23.01.2022 3 August 1305: The capture of Sir William Wallace Sir William Wallace was born around 1270 and was a member of the Scottish lesser nobility. His birthplace and parentage is disputed by historians, but his seal gives his fathers name as Alan Wallace. We do know that he was first cousin to Roger de Kirkpatrick who was present when Robert the Bruce argued with and killed John Comyn in the Chapel of Greyfriars Monastery in 1306. Before the war of independence, Wallace is a bit o...f a shadowy character. It is thought that he served in Edward 1sts army against Wales, since his seal bears the mark of the archers. A lot of what is written about him was by Blind Harry or Henry the Minstrel, who wrote The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace 172 years after Wallaces death. According to Harry, Wallace was seven feet tall. While historically inaccurate, Harrys work influenced Robert Burns, Lord Byron, John Keats and Randall Wallace who wrote the screenplay for the movie Braveheart, starring Mel Gibson as Wallace. Wallace married a woman called Marion Braidfute, who was killed by the High Sheriff of Lanark, William de Heselrig. The first recorded act known to be carried out by Wallace was the murder of Heselrig in May 1297. Wallaces strength was the strategic use of terrain and opportunistic tactics which served him well at the Battle of Stirling Bridge on 11 September 1297, which he led with Andrew Moray against the English. This battle followed the 1296 surrender and abdication of the Scottish king, John Balliol, enabling English overlordship. But Wallace was having none of that, thank you very much! Wallace was knighted and made a Guardian of Scotland in 1297. In April 1298 the English made a second attempt to invade Scotland which culminated at the Battle of Falkirk on 22 July. Without the conventional military tactics of Moray, who had died from wounds at Stirling Bridge, Wallaces guerrilla tactics were no match for the English longbows and the Scottish forces were overtaken. After the loss at Falkirk Wallace concentrated on gathering support from Spain, France and Rome for Scottish independence. He was back in Scotland in 1304, engaging Edwards forces in minor skirmishes until his luck ran out on 3 August 1305 when a Scottish knight loyal to Edward turned him in at Robroyston near Glasgow. He was tried for treason in London on the 23rd, where he stated that he could not have been a traitor to Edward since he had never been his subject. He was stripped naked and dragged through the streets and then hanged, drawn and quartered. His head was displayed on a pike on London Bridge. Today a plaque at St Bartholomews Hospital, near the site of his execution bears both Latin (I tell you the truth. Freedom is what is best. Sons, never live life like slaves) and Gaelic (Bas Agus Buaidh" - Death and Victory).

23.01.2022 Seems plausible to me!

23.01.2022 Here are a couple of Australian newspaper articles about the 1934 rocket mail test in Scotland.

23.01.2022 Here's the translation for the Burn poem lines: Oh, would some Power give us the gift To see ourselves as others see us! It would from many a blunder free us,... And foolish notion: What airs in dress and gait would leave us, And even devotion! And also the site where you can see a scan of the original edition of his book: https://digital.nls.uk/poems-chiefly-in-the-sco//74571116

23.01.2022 26 July 1822: Robert William Thomson: Scotlands forgotten inventor Todays Scottish history snippet celebrates a great Scottish inventor who is not well known, which is a pity. On this day in 1822, Scottish Engineer and inventor, Robert William Thomson was baptised. Thomson had been born in Stonehaven late in June, the eleventh of twelve child of the local woollen mill owner. Hes best remembered for inventing the pneumatic tyre but had many other original ideas. As a tee...nager Thomson went to live with an uncle in Charleston, USA, where he served as an apprentice to a merchant. He didnt like this very much and returned to Scotland two years later. At age seventeen he started to teach himself chemistry, astronomy and how to work with electricity. He first used his talent for invention to make improvements to his mothers washing mangle and also tinkered with ideas for an elliptic rotary steam engine and a ribbon saw. Thomsons civil engineering career took him to Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh. In Edinburgh he invented a new way of detonating explosives using electricity and this was used to improve safety in the mining industry worldwide. He then moved to Dover where he worked in the railway industry, supervising the blasting of the chalk cliffs for the building of the South Eastern Railway, which ran from London to Dover. Thomson invented and patented the pneumatic tyre in 1845, at the relatively young age of 23 years. His design was made from a hollow belt of India rubber inflated with air and he called them aerial wheels. Although publicly demonstrated in Regents Park, London, Thomsons pneumatic tyre never went into production. The first such tyres were made by a Scots born Irishman who owned a prosperous veterinary practice, John Boyd Dunlop. Thomson invented the self-filing pen (fountain pen) in 1849 and his other inventions included road steamers and steam-driven omnibuses, a hydraulic dry dock, the floating jetty, machinery for sugar manufacturing, and applying steam power for agricultural work. Unlike many clever men, he made a lot of money from his inventions and lived in a huge townhouse at 3 Moray Place in Edinburgh. Thomson died, aged fifty one, in Edinburgh on 8 March 1873 and is buried in the Dean Cemetery. He had been in poor health for some time. After his death Thomsons wife Clara filed the last of his fourteen patents.

21.01.2022 2 August 1922: Which great Scot died today? Can you guess? Most people remember this great man for one thing. Can you guess who he was from this list of 20 facts? Hes on the left in the picture. Well post the solution soon! (1) He shared his first name with his father and grandfather, but originally had no middle name. He complained about this to his father who gave him a middle name for his 11th birthday. (2) His first invention, at age 12, was a machine for removing the h...usks from wheat. (3) He was obsessed with kites and with flight in general. He designed the first powered aircraft to be flown in Canada. (4) He famously said, When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. (5) He was born in 1847 in Edinburgh as the middle of three boys. Both his brothers, Melville and Edward, died of tuberculosis before they reached thirty. (6) The assassination of US president, James Garfield, led to his invention of a metal detector, to try and locate a bullet within his body before Garfield unhappily succumbed. (7) At different times he held British, Canadian and US citizenship. (8) He was instrumental in introducing the young Helen Keller to the woman who would teach her to write, speak and read braille. (9) His grandfather, father and uncle were all involved in the teaching of speech and elocution. His father invented Visible Speech for the deaf, which helped them read peoples lips. (10) He learned the Mohawk language which he translated into Visible Speech symbols and was made an Honorary Chief. (11) He developed a speed boat that held a world water-speed record for more than a decade from 1919. (12) He designed a method for separating salt from seawater and an iceberg detector. (13) His other inventions included early forerunners of fibre optics, tape recorders and floppy discs. (14) He was included on the lists of 100 Greatest Britons (in 2002), Top ten Greatest Canadians (2004) and 100 Greatest Americans (2005) and was the only person to be included in more than one of these lists. (15) He has a unit of sound named after him. (16) He attended the Royal High School, the University of Edinburgh and the University College of London. Like his father, he became a professor at a University. (17) He held more than 18 patents for his inventions. His most well-known patent was lodged just two hours before someone else with a similar idea lodged theirs. There were over 550 court challenges to his rights to the patent, but all failed. (18) He said his most famous invention was an interruption to his work, and so refused to have one in his study. (19) His mother, grandmother and wife were all deaf or hearing-impaired. (20) He invented the telephone. See more

21.01.2022 13 August 1907: The birth of the man who rebuilt Coventry Cathedral Todays story is about Sir Basil Spence, a Scotsman born in India who built, among other things, a beehive shaped building in New Zealand and decoy structures during the war. On this day 113 years ago he was born in Bombay to a chemist in the Indian Civil Service, and his wife who were both originally from Orkney. Spence was sent back to Scotland to attend school and then studied architecture at the Edinburgh... College of Art. He won several prizes and a scholarship due to his aptitude during his study at the college. During a one year post as assistant to Sir Edwin Lutyens, he helped on the designs for Viceroy House in New Delhi whilst also attending evening classes at the Bartlett School of Architecture. After graduating in 1931 he set up a practice with fellow student and they worked on both residential and exhibition design. Spence worked on three pavilions for the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow. In 1939 he joined the British Army as a second lieutenant in the Camouflage Training and Development Centre. He helped to make decoys for enemy bombs, such as a dummy oil storage facility for ships at Dover. He also took part in the D-Day landings in 1944 and was demobbed in 1945 at the rank of Major. After the war Spence set up his own architectural practice and was awarded an OBE in 1948 for his work in exhibition design. The business was expanded to London, which became his main residence. During the 1950s he taught architecture at the University of Leeds. His most well-known design was that for the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral which had been damaged by bombing during the war. Spence won the commission in a field of 200 candidates with a radical modern design and before the building was completed in 1962 Spence was knighted for his work. The building came to symbolize Britain's recovery from the war years. He also designed the British Embassy in Rome, the Hyde Park Cavalry Barracks, the Beehive (New Zealand Parliamentary Buildings), Glasgow Airport, Trawsfynydd nuclear power station and many other civic buildings. He died in November 1976 at his home in Suffolk. Spences work is mostly known for modernist buildings that reflect the post-war taste for the use of minimalism and the use of glass, steel and reinforced concrete.

21.01.2022 1 August 1746: A reminder of why we celebrate Tartan Day Given this anniversary, todays Scottish history snippet is about Tartan Day and the banning of Highland Dress. The last Jacobite rebellion, attempting to put James Stuart on the throne as the closest natural heir after his siblings, Queens Ann and Mary, both died childless, ended with the terrible loss at Culloden on 16 April 1746. The Duke of Cumberland, son of George 2nd, led his fathers forces at Culloden. After th...Continue reading

20.01.2022 Heres the translation for the Burn poem lines: Oh, would some Power give us the gift To see ourselves as others see us! It would from many a blunder free us,... And foolish notion: What airs in dress and gait would leave us, And even devotion! And also the site where you can see a scan of the original edition of his book: https://digital.nls.uk/poems-chiefly-in-the-sco//74571116

19.01.2022 27 July 1689: the day a silver button killed Bonnie Dundee Todays Scottish history snippet is about the death of one of the heroes of the Jacobite cause, Bonnie Dundee. He is best known for leading the first uprising in support of the Stuarts in 1689. John Graham, 7th Laird of Claverhouse, was born in 1648 to a family that was descended from King Robert 3rd. As a young man he first served as a captain in the Scots Regiment of Sir William Lockhart. This regiment was part o...f an Anglo-Scots brigade that fought with the French in their war against the Dutch during 1673-1674. Claverhouse fought with distinction at the Battle of Seneff in Belgium in 1674. In early 1678, he resigned his commission and returned to Scotland where he was commissioned in the army of the king, Charles 2nd. His first task was to suppress lowland Presbyterian meetings by the Covenanters which the king deemed seditious. Claverhouses troops were beaten back by the Covenanters at the Battle of Drumclog in June 1679 but had a decisive victory three weeks later at the Battle of Bothwell Brig. He was given the nickname Bluidy Clavers due to his zealousness in these fights. Interestingly, he married into a staunch Covenanter family in 1684. In favour with Charles 2nd and his successor, James 2nd/7th, Claverhouses rise was meteoric and he was eventually promoted to major-general and given command of the kings forces in Scotland. He was created Viscount Dundee in 1688 and remained loyal to James after the Glorious Revolution (see our snippet on 25 July for more details of the revolution). He rallied the Highland clans who remained loyal to the deposed king and led them to victory at the Battle of Killiecrankie on this day 331 years ago. The Scottish and Irish army in support of James faced off against the much larger force led by Hugh Mackay in support of the new king, William 3rd. Unfortunately, Dundee was killed in the fight while leading the charge down a hill at sunset, his breastplate pierced by a musket ball. His breast plate and helmet are now kept in Blair Castle while his remains are in a vault underneath St Brides Kirk nearby. Bonnie Dundee, as he came to be known, became a legendary figure after his death. The strangest legend associated with him was that he had made a pact with the Devil and was thus invulnerable to lead. The story says that his death had been caused when a silver button from his coat pierced his heart during battle. Sir Walter Scott wrote a poem about him, The Bonnets o Bonnie Dundee, which was later set to music using a very old Scottish folk tune.

19.01.2022 7 August 1936: The worlds first beach airport opens at Barra. The island of Barra is home to the only airport in the world that has regular scheduled flights using a stretch of tidal beach as a runway. Aircraft first started arriving on the beach in June 1933, and the scheduled air services commenced on 7 August 1936, which is 84 years ago today. So you might be asking yourself why the runway is on the beach and what happens when the tide is in? The island is only 18 km long... and 10 km wide, with geography such that there is not much flat land other than the southern areas which are settled. The interior of Barra is very hilly. In the north there is a sandy peninsula that is situated in a wide shallow bay and this is where the airport is located. The Great Beach of Barra is 3 km long and is made of cockle shells. The flights that arrive are mostly De Havilland Twin Otters and these do not need a long runway, so there are three separate runways marked onto the beach. The alternate runways are positioned in a way that allows landings to almost always be made into the wind. Aircraft can only land and take off at low tide and there are usually flights to and from Glasgow every day in summer. The beach can also be used at night for emergency helicopters and planes which can land due to reflective strips and vehicle headlights which mark the landing area. The area is also famous for cockles, which the locals go out collecting. To stop any accidents due to people straying onto the runways, a windsock is put up whenever the airport is open. So when people look up and down the beach they can tell if they have to come in. Loganair runs the flights in and out of Glasgow, which is the only destination for the scheduled flights. It looks like it would be a great place to fly into! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB1EIuTW65I

18.01.2022 14 August 1863: The death of Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde. The subject of today’s story is a military man who changed his surname under mysterious circumstances. Colin Macliver was born in Glasgow in 1792. He was the eldest child of John, a cabinetmaker, and Agnes (nee Campbell). Due to a family tragedy his care was taken over by an uncle who enrolled him at the Royal Military and Naval Academy. At some point before he enlisted in 1808 the young man changed his surname to Ca...mpbell. The reason was never clear but there were many fanciful stories once he became famous. Perhaps it was a simple as sharing a last name with his uncle, who was a Major, being advantageous for the new recruit? Although his military career saw him eventually promoted to the rank of Field Marshall, Campbell’s progress through the ranks was slow. As a young man Campbell saw action just weeks after enlisting, serving in the 9th Regiment of Foot in the Peninsular War from 1808, gaining recognition for his bravery. In particular, he led the ‘forlorn hope’ (a type of suicide squad) in the Siege of San Sebastien in 1813, where he was wounded twice. His only brother died during the Peninsular War. You will find reports of his later military exploits in many sources. However, for today’s story we decided to concentrate on just one battle during the Crimean war. The painting we posted earlier shows what is remembered as The Thin Red Line from the Battle of Balaclava in 1854. On 25 October 1854 the 93rd Highland Regiment troops held a second defensive line against the Russian Cavalry in the South Valley near Balaclava after the first defensive line failed. The Highland Regiment had their backs to the sea, but Campbell had a poor opinion of the Russian Cavalry that he arranged his troops in a two-deep firing line instead of the usual square formation with four lines. William Russell, a war correspondent writing for The Times, was there, writing, The Russians dash at the Highlanders. The ground flies beneath their horses' feet; gathering speed at every stride, they dash on towards that thin red streak topped with a line of steel. The thin red streak later became known as the thin red line. Campbell told his men, There is no retreat from here, men. You must die where you stand. The Russian Cavalry retreated after the third volley from Campbell’s men. Campbell was known for his military precision and prudence during battle, always ensuring his men suffered as few casualties as possible. He was made Baron Clyde in 1858. He died on this day in 1863 in Kent and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

18.01.2022 4 August 1870: The birth of the miner who became the worlds biggest star, Sir Harry Lauder Lets celebrate the birthday of the coal miner who went on to be the first British entertainer to sell a million records. He was also knighted for services to the war effort during WWI. Born Henry McLennan Lauder in Portobello, we know him as Harry. He was born into a comfortable life with both parents coming from well-connected families. All that changed when he was twelve years old. ...The family had moved to Chesterfield in Derbyshire, where his father was employed to design china since he was a highly skilled potter. Unfortunately the poor man died of pneumonia not long after they arrived. Harrys mother moved her seven children to live with her family in Arbroath. As the eldest child, Harry helped out by working in the evenings at a flax mill and studying at the mill school during the day. The family moved two years later to Hamilton, Lanarkshire, to live with another relative and Harry and two of his brothers became coal miners. He worked as a miner for ten years, narrowly missing death a number of times. At the mine he fell for the daughter of the colliery manager, Ann Vallance, and they married in June 1891. Lauder had started singing while at school in Arbroath and continued this by entering singing competitions in Hamilton. In 1894 he had his first professional engagement in Larkhall, which led to him touring Scotland with a concert party. He was ambitious enough to start his own touring company and had his first big success in 1898 starring as an Irish comedian. This led to jobs in London and then overseas tours. He became well known around the world and toured over twenty times in the USA. Lauder usually performed in full highland dress with a kilt, sporran, tam oshanter and cromach (walking stick). His most popular songs included Roamin in the Gloaming, I Love a Lassie and A Wee Deoch-an-Doris. At one point he was the worlds biggest star. During WWI Lauder helped the war effort through recruiting, entertaining the troops and raising money for wounded soldiers. After the war his career was even more successful and very lucrative. He formally retired in 1935 but was persuaded to help entertain the troops in WW2 by taking part in radio broadcasts. His only child, John, was killed in action at Pozieres in 1916 and his wife, Ann, died before him. He was looked after by his niece, Margaret, until his death in February 1950.

17.01.2022 I feel like we should all post pictures of ourselves in a kilt, just to make our point about our national dress on the anniversary of the Dress Act of 1746. I'd start, but I haven't had a kilt since I was six. My 'good friend', Sir Sean Connery can stand in for me. Please post your pictures in your own plaids. IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM POSTING YOUR PICS PLEASE SEND THEM IN A MESSAGE AND WE'LL POST THEM FOR YOU.

17.01.2022 Today's story (14th August) is coming soon! Here's a hint.

17.01.2022 13 August 1907: The birth of the man who rebuilt Coventry Cathedral Today’s story is about Sir Basil Spence, a Scotsman born in India who built, among other things, a beehive shaped building in New Zealand and decoy structures during the war. On this day 113 years ago he was born in Bombay to a chemist in the Indian Civil Service, and his wife who were both originally from Orkney. Spence was sent back to Scotland to attend school and then studied architecture at the Edinburgh... College of Art. He won several prizes and a scholarship due to his aptitude during his study at the college. During a one year post as assistant to Sir Edwin Lutyens, he helped on the designs for Viceroy House in New Delhi whilst also attending evening classes at the Bartlett School of Architecture. After graduating in 1931 he set up a practice with fellow student and they worked on both residential and exhibition design. Spence worked on three pavilions for the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow. In 1939 he joined the British Army as a second lieutenant in the Camouflage Training and Development Centre. He helped to make decoys for enemy bombs, such as a dummy oil storage facility for ships at Dover. He also took part in the D-Day landings in 1944 and was demobbed in 1945 at the rank of Major. After the war Spence set up his own architectural practice and was awarded an OBE in 1948 for his work in exhibition design. The business was expanded to London, which became his main residence. During the 1950s he taught architecture at the University of Leeds. His most well-known design was that for the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral which had been damaged by bombing during the war. Spence won the commission in a field of 200 candidates with a radical modern design and before the building was completed in 1962 Spence was knighted for his work. The building came to symbolize Britain's recovery from the war years. He also designed the British Embassy in Rome, the Hyde Park Cavalry Barracks, the ‘Beehive’ (New Zealand Parliamentary Buildings), Glasgow Airport, Trawsfynydd nuclear power station and many other civic buildings. He died in November 1976 at his home in Suffolk. Spence’s work is mostly known for modernist buildings that reflect the post-war taste for the use of minimalism and the use of glass, steel and reinforced concrete.

16.01.2022 9 August 1822: The ‘return’ of the King Today marks the anniversary of the departure from England of King George 4th on his way to Edinburgh the first British monarch to visit Scotland in over 170 years. The previous visit was by Charles 2nd in 1650 and it seems unbelievable that the rulers of Scotland had not visited for such a long time! George became king in 1820 but had served as Prince Regent from 1811 due to the illness of his father, George 3rd. The visit was stage m...anaged by Sir Walter Scott, who masterminded a spectacle full of pomp and ceremony which painted a romantic view of Scotland and ‘Scottishness’. The Kilts and tartan that had been banned in 1746 had led to a dearth of the traditional dress, particularly in the lowlands, something that the Dress Act Repeal in 1782 had not changed. At the time of the King’s visit tartan was usually seen only in army uniforms. Scott’s organisation of the 21 day visit was designed to give the message that there was a romantic heritage that all Scots should aspire to. Scott ensured that all gentlemen attending the Highland Ball wore the ‘ancient Highland dress’ if they were not in army uniform. The King’s outfit for the main ceremonies included a bright red Royal Tartan that we all recognise today as the Royal Stuart. The kilt, which was far too short, was accessorised with gold chains, a dirk, sword and pistols. George 4th was rather overweight and opted to wear pink tights under his kilt but neither of these was reflected in the official painting by Sir David Wilkie which was very flattering. George 4th only appeared in full Highland dress once but did opt to wear trews in the Royal Stuart on another day. The visit managed to improve the King’s popularity in Scotland. More importantly, the use of tartan and other Scottish items led to the modern image of Scottish national dress and achieved a mutual respect between many Lowlanders and Highlanders that had not been evident before the visit. The romantic revival of tartan was adopted by members elite society across Scotland and Europe. It is from this time that most associations between a clan and a particular tartan pattern emerged. See more

15.01.2022 10 August 1784: The death of Allan Ramsay, painter to the King Today’s story is about the portrait painter, Allan Ramsay, who is usually called ‘The Younger’ to avoid confusion with his father who was a famous poet. Born in Edinburgh in October 1713, Ramsay was the oldest son of Allan Ramsay the elder and Christian (nee Ross). He studied art in 1729 at the Academy of St Luke which his father had established, and then went to London to study under Hans Hysing. He spent three y...ears in Naples and Rome, studying under Imperiali (Francesco Fernandi) and Francesco Solimena whose styles were Baroque and Rococo. Returning to Edinburgh in 1738, Ramsay painted a number of portraits, including a full-length portrait of the Duke of Argyll which was widely admired. His first wife, Anne, died in childbirth in 1743 and all three of their children died before adulthood. Ramsay continued to paint and supplemented his income by teaching drawing. His second wife, Margaret (nee Lindsay) was one of his students. Margaret was the daughter of a lord and great-granddaughter of a Viscount. Her family were not happy that she was planning to marry an artist whom they considered to be much lower on the social scale, so the couple eloped in March 1752. They lived on the continent from 1754 until 1757 in Rome, Florence, Naples and Tivoli. Ramsay made most of his income from painting portraits of people on the Grand Tour. They both also drew and painted antiquities and archaeological sites. After their return to London Ramsay was appointed ‘Principal Painter in Ordinary’ to George 3rd. The King commissioned many royal portraits, often gifted to ambassadors and colonial governors. Over the years he had become more interested in research and literary works so Ramsay retired from painting in 1770. He ceased painting altogether when he dislocated his right arm in an accident. Ramsay and Margaret had a long and happy marriage which produced three children. He died in Dover on this day in 1784, two years after his beloved wife.

15.01.2022 30 July 1938: Childrens comic The Beano is first published Todays Scottish history snippet is about The Beano, the longest running childrens comic anthology founded in Dundee on this day 82 years ago by DC Thomson and Co. It is published on a Wednesday and runs weekly, except for some time during WW2 when it ran every second week due to paper and ink shortages. The company was founded in 1905 by David Couper Thomson and is a publishing and television production company w...hich has produced the Dundee Courier, The Evening Telegraph, Oor Wullie, The Broons, The Beano, The Dandy, The Peoples Friend and Commando Comics. From 1921 DC Thompson had published boys adventure stories (e.g. The Rover, The Wizard) and had also placed childrens comics, Oor Wullie and The Broons, in the Sunday Post. Based on the success of these publications it was decided that a further group of comics for both boys and girls would be launched, and the longest surviving has been The Beano. The first star was an ostrich called Big Eggo who kept losing its eggs. The name The Beano was chosen for the anthology as it was the slang term for bean-feast, i.e. a good time. The first edition was sold for two pence and was a big success, selling 443,000 copies. By the end of 1945 it was regularly selling over a million copies although the circulation is a lot lower now. The Beano reached its 4,000th edition at the end of August 2019. Over the years some changes have been made, with characters such as Ball Boy, Les Pretend, Ivy the Terrible, The Three Bears and Pansy Potter being dropped once they became less popular. Some dropped characters have made a modern return: Lord Snooty, Baby Face Finlayson, Little Plum and Biffo the Bear. The most popular characters have remained Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, The Bash Street Kids, The Numskulls, Rodger the Dodger, Billy Whizz, Bananaman and Tricky Dicky. Early on, most of the characters were shown as being badly behaved, such as Baby Face Finlayson being a robber and Dennis the Menace acting as a bully. Usually, although the readers were quite sympathetic to these naughty people, the stories often had them being punished for their misdeeds. This was most often by being smacked with a slipper an old fashioned punishment now used as the name of the local police chief, Sergeant Slipper. Modern issues also contain references to bodily functions such as flatulence, something which would not have been published in a childrens publication before the 1950s. When The Beano turned 70 in 2008, the publishers ran Gnashional Menace Day, where everyone was encouraged to be naughty like Dennis the Menace. I wonder how many Aussie-Scots readers were naughty that day!

15.01.2022 11 August 1919: The death of Andrew Carnegie Who do you think I am, Andrew Carnegie? How many of you heard that from your Mum when you were a kid, asking for something expensive? So you probably know that he was a millionaire, but did you know he came from very humble beginnings? Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline on 25 November 1835. His father was a hand loom weaver and the family lived in a cottage with one main room which served as a living room, dining room and ...bedroom. By 1848 the family had fallen on hard times, so they borrowed money from his paternal grandfather and migrated to Allegheny (now Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania. Here Carnegie and his father worked in a Scottish-owned cotton mill, with the young Andrew working as a bobbin boy, working twelve hours a day, six days a week. Carnegie then became a telegraph messenger boy. He took advantage of the access the workers had to the owners library since self-education had been instilled in him by his father and uncle. He started working as a telegraph operator at the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and within a few years was promoted to superintendent. His boss taught him to invest in shares and over time Carnegie reinvested the profits in rail-road related industries, including iron, rails and bridges. He was also one of the early investors in the Columbia Oil Company which was very profitable. The need for steel during the Civil War prompted him to establish a steel rolling mill and ironworks. Soon he was very wealthy. In 1901 Carnegie decided to sell out of his company, for a figure that would be equivalent to nearly seven billion US dollars in todays terms. Carnegie wrote many articles about money and service to society. His beliefs can be summed up as: (1) Spend the first third of one's life getting all the education one can, (2) Spend the next third making all the money one can and (3) Spend the last third giving it all away for worthwhile causes. Once hed retired from business Carnegie concentrated on philanthropic works. He established more than 3,000 public libraries throughout English speaking countries. He also funded individual universities and gave ten million pounds to establish an on-going trust for universities in Scotland. He built Carnegie Hall in New York City and made many donations in the arts, world peace and support of the working class through opportunities in education. In his final days, Carnegie suffered from bronchial pneumonia. Before his death on August 11, 1919, he had donated billions of dollars for various causes.

14.01.2022 7 August 1936: The world’s first beach airport opens at Barra. The island of Barra is home to the only airport in the world that has regular scheduled flights using a stretch of tidal beach as a runway. Aircraft first started arriving on the beach in June 1933, and the scheduled air services commenced on 7 August 1936, which is 84 years ago today. So you might be asking yourself why the runway is on the beach and what happens when the tide is in? The island is only 18 km long... and 10 km wide, with geography such that there is not much flat land other than the southern areas which are settled. The interior of Barra is very hilly. In the north there is a sandy peninsula that is situated in a wide shallow bay and this is where the airport is located. The Great Beach of Barra is 3 km long and is made of cockle shells. The flights that arrive are mostly De Havilland Twin Otters and these do not need a long runway, so there are three separate runways marked onto the beach. The alternate runways are positioned in a way that allows landings to almost always be made into the wind. Aircraft can only land and take off at low tide and there are usually flights to and from Glasgow every day in summer. The beach can also be used at night for emergency helicopters and planes which can land due to reflective strips and vehicle headlights which mark the landing area. The area is also famous for cockles, which the locals go out collecting. To stop any accidents due to people straying onto the runways, a windsock is put up whenever the airport is open. So when people look up and down the beach they can tell if they have to come in. Loganair runs the flights in and out of Glasgow, which is the only destination for the scheduled flights. It looks like it would be a great place to fly into! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB1EIuTW65I

14.01.2022 10 August 1784: The death of Allan Ramsay, painter to the King Todays story is about the portrait painter, Allan Ramsay, who is usually called The Younger to avoid confusion with his father who was a famous poet. Born in Edinburgh in October 1713, Ramsay was the oldest son of Allan Ramsay the elder and Christian (nee Ross). He studied art in 1729 at the Academy of St Luke which his father had established, and then went to London to study under Hans Hysing. He spent three y...ears in Naples and Rome, studying under Imperiali (Francesco Fernandi) and Francesco Solimena whose styles were Baroque and Rococo. Returning to Edinburgh in 1738, Ramsay painted a number of portraits, including a full-length portrait of the Duke of Argyll which was widely admired. His first wife, Anne, died in childbirth in 1743 and all three of their children died before adulthood. Ramsay continued to paint and supplemented his income by teaching drawing. His second wife, Margaret (nee Lindsay) was one of his students. Margaret was the daughter of a lord and great-granddaughter of a Viscount. Her family were not happy that she was planning to marry an artist whom they considered to be much lower on the social scale, so the couple eloped in March 1752. They lived on the continent from 1754 until 1757 in Rome, Florence, Naples and Tivoli. Ramsay made most of his income from painting portraits of people on the Grand Tour. They both also drew and painted antiquities and archaeological sites. After their return to London Ramsay was appointed Principal Painter in Ordinary to George 3rd. The King commissioned many royal portraits, often gifted to ambassadors and colonial governors. Over the years he had become more interested in research and literary works so Ramsay retired from painting in 1770. He ceased painting altogether when he dislocated his right arm in an accident. Ramsay and Margaret had a long and happy marriage which produced three children. He died in Dover on this day in 1784, two years after his beloved wife.

13.01.2022 Thanks to everyone who took part in our Tartan Day Challenge of 24 Scottish songs. I would like to thank your patience with our absence for a few hours in the middle of the challenge (a close friend's Mum went into the emergency department - she pulled through thanks to her good Scottish blood). However, I'm a bit worried about you lot because your favorite song (no 6) saved your Mammy's Mammy but not your Daddie's Mammy so you might be out of the will. Not to mention none of you were into the sexy rendition of the Gael by Albannach (ladies, you really need to check them out! Don't tell your husband)

13.01.2022 Our Mystery Man is none other than Alexander Graham Bell!

13.01.2022 For Harry Lauder's birthday here's a song, 'Just A Wee Deoch & Doris" recorded in 1912, which means a little drink for the road before we part. My favourite line is "it's a braw bright moonlict nicht' Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRjyLbSDJz8 Just A Wee Deoch & Doris

13.01.2022 8 August 1812: Henry Bell and his Comets The subject of todays story is a man who followed his obsession with steamboats to run Europes first commercial passenger service between Glasgow and Greenock. Henry Bell was born in Torphichen, West Lothian, in April 1767 to a family of millwrights and engineers who built harbours and bridges throughout the United Kingdom. He struggled to focus on one trade, training first as a stonemason and then as a millwright. He developed an i...nterest in ships and studied ship modelling in Boness. After working as an engineer in London for John Rennie, he returned to Glasgow to work as a carpenter, starting Bell and Patterson with a colleague. As early as 1800 he had an idea to develop a boat propelled by steam. He started corresponding with Robert Fulton, the man who operated the worlds first commercial steamboat service in New York in 1807. Bell had sent Fulton his first designs for steamboats. Bell hired a local shipbuilder in Helensburgh, John Wood, to build a paddle steamer. It was named PS Comet after a great comet had appeared in the skies in 1811. On 8 August 1812 Comet made her first commercial steamboat journey to Greenock. There was then a regular service between Glasgow, Greenock and Helensburgh. By 1816 others had also started their own steamer services, often with bigger and better boats and offering longer journeys. Bell started offering a four day link from Glasgow to Fort William, Oban and the Crinan Canal on a renovated, bigger Comet and also another service in the Firth of Forth. Unfortunately the Comet was wrecked near Oban in 1820. The engine was rescued and used in a brewery in Greenoch for some time but now resides in the Science Museum in London. A replica of the Comet, built by shipyard apprentices, is in the centre of Port Glasgow. Bell built Comet 2 which collided with another steamer off Kempock Point, Gourock, on 21 October 1825. The Comet sank very quickly and 62 of the 80 passengers perished. Bell received no financial benefit from the widespread use of steam powered ships and was only saved from poverty in his old age through the benevolence of a number of benefactors. He died in Helensburgh in 1830. See more

12.01.2022 THE TARTAN DAY CHALLENGE Song No 23. Auld Lang Syne written by Robert Burns So, we didnt quite get all 24 songs up on Tartan Day for the challenge, but we werent far off. Since I feel quite bad putting two of his songs in the list but with other artists playing them, heres Dougie MacLean singing this lovely ballad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPnhaGWBnys

12.01.2022 WHAT TO DO ON A WET AFTERNOON AND THE QUILTS ARE DONE - MAKE A CUSHION COVER- OF COURSE I COULD HAVE DUSTED, WASHED THE FLOORS BUT EH THIS IS MUCH MORE FUN - MY FIRST EFFORT.

11.01.2022 12 August 1872: Andrew Smith- the doctor who collected reptiles Todays subject is another Scot who is not very well known. Andrew Smith was a doctor and a zoologist who studied the zoology and anthropology of southern Africa. He was born in Hawick in December 1797. His father, Thomas, was a shepherd who later became a market gardener. Smith was apprenticed to a local doctor and then studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After joining the Army Medical Corps he went... first to Fort Pitt in Chatham and then to Nova Scotia, England, Malta and the Cape Colony (modern day South Africa) where he supervised the care of the soldiers guarding Grahamstown. He later established a dispensary for the indigenous people of the area. While in South Africa Smith led a number of expeditions to visit Bantu and Xhosa tribes, both at the bequest of the British government and to follow his own interest in anthropology and natural history which had first been started when at Fort Pitt. Smith became the first superintendent of the South African Museum of Natural History. While in South Africa he met a young Charles Darwin who was visiting on the Beagle in 1936 and the two men kept in touch. Darwin sponsored Smith to gain membership of the Royal Society in 1857. Many of the geological specimens Darwin brought back from his voyage were gifted by Smith. Smith returned to England at the beginning of 1837 and started work on his five volume work, Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa. Most of his thousands of collected animal specimens were sold and a large number ended up in the National Museum in Edinburgh. He was still in the army medical service and was promoted up the ranks and was appointed Director-General of the Army Medical service in 1853. He was responsible for organising the medical service during the Crimean War (1853-1856), amid controversy on the competence of the service. He was cleared of any issues and was created Knight Commander of the Bath in 1858. Smith retired shortly afterwards due to ill health. He died on 12 August 1872. Smith was keenly interested in reptiles and has a number of new species named after him, including a gecko, a lizard and a freshwater turtle.

10.01.2022 International Tartan Day Has been cancelled this year 2020 but I have uploaded a video on Tartan Day held last July 2019 The Australian Scottish Community Qld.Inc. are the promoters of this yearly event & the video was at our 23rd. Tartan Day & filmed by Brisbane Movie Makers for Aussie-Scots, We thank all who gave their free time to entertain the crowd & our aim is to promote Scottish Awareness in the Australian Community. Hope all is well. President Ian Campbell DU.a email [email protected]

09.01.2022 16 August 1864: The birth of Elsie Inglis Todays story is about a woman born to Scottish parents in India, whose upbringing reflected their view that girls deserved the same educational opportunities as boys. She went on to be a doctor, a humanitarian, a suffragist and a fighter for the rights of children and the disadvantaged. Elsie Maud Inglis was born in Nainital in the north of India, just a stones throw from modern Nepal, 156 years ago today. She was one of eight child...ren of Harriet (nee Thompson) and John Inglis, a magistrate and civil servant in India. From an early age Inglis was attracted to medicine and experimented on her dolls, treating them for measles that she had painted on. Her extended family included religious and medical folks, including a cousin who was married to the first Scottish women to obtain a medical licence, Grace Cadell. In Elsie this forged a desire to serve people through medicine. Elsie studied in Edinburgh and attended finishing school in Paris, after which she expressed an interest in studying medicine. Her studies were delayed while she nursed her mother, who died of scarlet fever in 1885. Inglis and her father founded the Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women, where she studied and graduated as a doctor and a surgeon. These were exciting times, when women were first starting to make their voice heard in the medical profession. Elsie got a post at the ground-breaking New Hospital for Women in London, started by Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and also at a maternity hospital in Dublin. When she returned to Edinburgh in 1894, she combine further medical studies with the care of her father who died in March that year. She started a hospice for midwifery and maternity services in George Square (Edinburgh) with a fellow student, Jessie McLaren MacGregor. Often, she would waive her fees due to the poverty of her patients and she worked to support polio sufferers. Elsies dissatisfaction with the medical care available to women led to her involvement with the suffrage movement. She was recognised by her medical colleagues as a calm and collected professional who coped well in emergencies. During WW1 Elsie set up the Scottish Womens Hospitals for Foreign Service which was active in Belgium, France, Serbia and Russia. When she approached the Royal Army Medical Corps with her medically-qualified womens staff they told her to Go home and sit still. However the French government supported the idea leading to a unit in Serbia where there was a typhus outbreak. Inglis died on 26 November 1917, the day after she arrived back in England, from bowel cancer, She is buried in Dean cemetery. People said of her, In Scotland she became a doctor, in Serbia she became a saint.

09.01.2022 26 July 1822: Robert William Thomson: Scotlands 'forgotten' inventor Today's Scottish history snippet celebrates a great Scottish inventor who is not well known, which is a pity. On this day in 1822, Scottish Engineer and inventor, Robert William Thomson was baptised. Thomson had been born in Stonehaven late in June, the eleventh of twelve child of the local woollen mill owner. Hes best remembered for inventing the pneumatic tyre but had many other original ideas. As a tee...nager Thomson went to live with an uncle in Charleston, USA, where he served as an apprentice to a merchant. He didnt like this very much and returned to Scotland two years later. At age seventeen he started to teach himself chemistry, astronomy and how to work with electricity. He first used his talent for invention to make improvements to his mothers washing mangle and also tinkered with ideas for an elliptic rotary steam engine and a ribbon saw. Thomsons civil engineering career took him to Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh. In Edinburgh he invented a new way of detonating explosives using electricity and this was used to improve safety in the mining industry worldwide. He then moved to Dover where he worked in the railway industry, supervising the blasting of the chalk cliffs for the building of the South Eastern Railway, which ran from London to Dover. Thomson invented and patented the pneumatic tyre in 1845, at the relatively young age of 23 years. His design was made from a hollow belt of India rubber inflated with air and he called them aerial wheels. Although publicly demonstrated in Regents Park, London, Thomsons pneumatic tyre never went into production. The first such tyres were made by a Scots born Irishman who owned a prosperous veterinary practice, John Boyd Dunlop. Thomson invented the self-filing pen (fountain pen) in 1849 and his other inventions included road steamers and steam-driven omnibuses, a hydraulic dry dock, the floating jetty, machinery for sugar manufacturing, and applying steam power for agricultural work. Unlike many clever men, he made a lot of money from his inventions and lived in a huge townhouse at 3 Moray Place in Edinburgh. Thomson died, aged fifty one, in Edinburgh on 8 March 1873 and is buried in the Dean Cemetery. He had been in poor health for some time. After his death Thomsons wife Clara filed the last of his fourteen patents.

08.01.2022 16 August 1864: The birth of Elsie Inglis Today’s story is about a woman born to Scottish parents in India, whose upbringing reflected their view that girls deserved the same educational opportunities as boys. She went on to be a doctor, a humanitarian, a suffragist and a fighter for the rights of children and the disadvantaged. Elsie Maud Inglis was born in Nainital in the north of India, just a stone’s throw from modern Nepal, 156 years ago today. She was one of eight child...ren of Harriet (nee Thompson) and John Inglis, a magistrate and civil servant in India. From an early age Inglis was attracted to medicine and experimented on her dolls, treating them for ‘measles’ that she had painted on. Her extended family included religious and medical folks, including a cousin who was married to the first Scottish women to obtain a medical licence, Grace Cadell. In Elsie this forged a desire to serve people through medicine. Elsie studied in Edinburgh and attended finishing school in Paris, after which she expressed an interest in studying medicine. Her studies were delayed while she nursed her mother, who died of scarlet fever in 1885. Inglis and her father founded the Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women, where she studied and graduated as a doctor and a surgeon. These were exciting times, when women were first starting to make their voice heard in the medical profession. Elsie got a post at the ground-breaking New Hospital for Women in London, started by Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and also at a maternity hospital in Dublin. When she returned to Edinburgh in 1894, she combine further medical studies with the care of her father who died in March that year. She started a hospice for midwifery and maternity services in George Square (Edinburgh) with a fellow student, Jessie McLaren MacGregor. Often, she would waive her fees due to the poverty of her patients and she worked to support polio sufferers. Elsie’s dissatisfaction with the medical care available to women led to her involvement with the suffrage movement. She was recognised by her medical colleagues as a calm and collected professional who coped well in emergencies. During WW1 Elsie set up the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service which was active in Belgium, France, Serbia and Russia. When she approached the Royal Army Medical Corps with her medically-qualified women’s staff they told her to Go home and sit still. However the French government supported the idea leading to a unit in Serbia where there was a typhus outbreak. Inglis died on 26 November 1917, the day after she arrived back in England, from bowel cancer, She is buried in Dean cemetery. People said of her, In Scotland she became a doctor, in Serbia she became a saint.

08.01.2022 6 August 1881: The birth of Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin Todays story is about the man who discovered Penicillin, helping to save millions of lives. Alexander Fleming was born at a farm near Darvel in Ayrshire in 1881. He earned a two-year scholarship to Kilmarnock Academy and then attended the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London. At twenty an inheritance from his uncle enabled him to start studying medicine at St Marys Hospital Medical School. Alexan...der was awarded a degree with distinctions in 1906. Whilst studying he had been a member of the St Marys Hospital rifle club. The captain of the club wanted to keep Fleming on the medical schools team, so he encouraged him to get a job in the research department under the bacteriologist, Sir Almroth Wright, who was a pioneer in the study of immunology and vaccines. This decision took the young man down the path that led to his greatest work. Fleming took a degree in Science, majoring in Bacteriology, and then worked as a lecturer at the medical school until 1914, when he entered the Royal Army Medical Corps during WW1. After the war Fleming returned to St Marys and was appointed Professor of Bacteriology in 1928. He had first started thinking about the nature of infection during his time in France trying to save wounded soldiers who often died of sepsis. Back at St Marys he started investigating substances with antibacterial action. His first big discovery was lysozyme, an enzyme that helps to stop bacterial growth. The work was an important part of understanding immunity since lysozyme also interacts to enhance the actions of many of the bodys immune cells. Flemings biggest discovery, the antibiotic Penicillin, came about by a happy accident. He had been working with the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus and had left petri dishes containing the strain on a bench in his lab while he went on holiday. When he returned, he noticed that one dish had been contaminated with a fungus and that the bacteria immediately around it had been destroyed. The fungus was identified as Penicillium which Fleming isolated and grew in a broth which he found was antibacterial against many other types of bacteria. He eventually renamed his mould juice Penicillin. The scientists Howard Florey and Ernest Boris Chain went on to discover how to mass produce Penicillin in 1944. The three of them received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945 for their work on the antibiotic. Fleming was knighted in 1944 by King George 6th. He died in London of a heart attack in 1955 at the age of 73. His ashes are buried in St Pauls Cathedral. See more

07.01.2022 5 August 1876: Mary, the Queen of Okoyong Todays story is about a relatively unknown Scot, Mary Slessor. Mary was born into a poor family in Aberdeen in 1848. Her father was an alcoholic and left his trade as a shoemaker to work as a labourer. They moved to the slums in Dundee in 1859 so he could work at the local mill. Mary started work at Baxter Brothers mill at age eleven, spending half the day at the mill and the other half at school. Her father and two brothers died o...f pneumonia, leaving Mary, her sisters and mother to fend for themselves. Marys mother was a skilled weaver and the young girl followed in her footsteps, working as a jute worker eleven hours a day from the age of fourteen. Mary also shared her mothers strong devotion to the Presbyterian faith. When she was twenty-seven the famous missionary and explorer, David Livingstone, died and this had a profound effect on her, leading her to become a missionary. On this day 144 years ago, Mary set sail on the SS Ethiopia, bound for a mission in the Calabar region of Nigeria. Here she worked with the Efik people for three years until she had to return to Dundee in 1879 after contacting malaria. She returned to Nigeria after sixteen months to work at a different mission. By now Mary was fluent in the local language and was eating the local food, mostly so she could send money back to her surviving family members. Three years later her poor health meant a return to Scotland and during this time she spoke at many churches about her missionary work. In her return to Nigeria Mary was sent to more remote areas, including Okoyong, where male missionaries had been killed. Whether it was her red hair and bright blue eyes, her reputation for eccentricity or her simple lifestyle living in a traditional house with Efiks, Mary was accepted into the community. Her main legacies are her work to stop the practice of abandoning twin babies to die (there was the belief that such pregnancies were the work of the Devil), adoption of orphans, promotion of womens rights and provision of education for local people. She was instrumental in establishing the Hope Waddell Training Institute in 1895, a school which went on to become the largest vocational training centre in West Africa. Mary suffered the effects of malaria throughout her life, and at times near the end was too weak to walk and had to be pushed along in a hand cart. Mary never gave up her missionary work and died in Nigeria in 1915. Her body was transported from the remote rainforest where she died, down the Cross River, to a state funeral in Duke Town (modern day Calabar). She is remembered in Nigeria as the Queen of Okoyong.

07.01.2022 8 August 1812: Henry Bell and his Comets The subject of today’s story is a man who followed his obsession with steamboats to run Europe’s first commercial passenger service between Glasgow and Greenock. Henry Bell was born in Torphichen, West Lothian, in April 1767 to a family of millwrights and engineers who built harbours and bridges throughout the United Kingdom. He struggled to focus on one trade, training first as a stonemason and then as a millwright. He developed an i...nterest in ships and studied ship modelling in Bo’ness. After working as an engineer in London for John Rennie, he returned to Glasgow to work as a carpenter, starting Bell and Patterson with a colleague. As early as 1800 he had an idea to develop a boat propelled by steam. He started corresponding with Robert Fulton, the man who operated the world’s first commercial steamboat service in New York in 1807. Bell had sent Fulton his first designs for steamboats. Bell hired a local shipbuilder in Helensburgh, John Wood, to build a paddle steamer. It was named PS Comet after a great comet had appeared in the skies in 1811. On 8 August 1812 Comet made her first commercial steamboat journey to Greenock. There was then a regular service between Glasgow, Greenock and Helensburgh. By 1816 others had also started their own steamer services, often with bigger and better boats and offering longer journeys. Bell started offering a four day link from Glasgow to Fort William, Oban and the Crinan Canal on a renovated, bigger Comet and also another service in the Firth of Forth. Unfortunately the Comet was wrecked near Oban in 1820. The engine was rescued and used in a brewery in Greenoch for some time but now resides in the Science Museum in London. A replica of the Comet, built by shipyard apprentices, is in the centre of Port Glasgow. Bell built Comet 2 which collided with another steamer off Kempock Point, Gourock, on 21 October 1825. The Comet sank very quickly and 62 of the 80 passengers perished. Bell received no financial benefit from the widespread use of steam powered ships and was only saved from poverty in his old age through the benevolence of a number of benefactors. He died in Helensburgh in 1830. See more

07.01.2022 31 July 1786: Robert Burns publishes Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect On this day 234 years ago, Robert Burns published his first collection of verse. This has become known as The Kilmarnock Edition since it was printed and issued by John Wilson of Kilmarnock. The 612 copies that were printed sold at 3 shillings each, which with inflation would be about 24 pounds today. The edition was dedicated to a dear friend, patron and landlord, Gavin Hamilton. Of the 612 cop...ies there were only twelve copies still in private hands in 2006, one of which sold for 40,000 pounds, so it was a good investment! When this first volume was released Burns private life was in some disarray due to his various romantic entanglements and he had been planning to move to Jamaica to work on a sugar plantation. However, the book was very successful and he become famous across the country, so cancelled his plans to leave Scotland. In 1787 a second run, known as The Edinburgh Edition, was published by William Creech and printer William Smellie, with a print run of 3250 copies. Creech commissioned painter, Alexander Nasmyth, to do a portrait which was used for the engraving in the frontispiece (the original painting is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery). Burns received 400 pounds for this second volume. Along with unofficial editions printed in Dublin and Belfast, there was a second Edinburgh edition and later London, Philadelphia and New York versions. The later versions from 1787 onwards contained additional poems, including Tam OShanter. There was even a miniature copy, complete with a magnifying glass, in a protective case that many troops had in the trenches in WWI. Ill add a link on our Facebook page where you can look at a virtual copy of the original Kilmarnock Edition (without paying 40,000 pounds!). For some inspiration, heres a snippet from To A Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church which was inspired by seeing a well-dressed church goer unaware that there is a louse wandering around on her bonnet. Have a go at translating the words! O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion: What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, An' ev'n devotion!

05.01.2022 IF INTERESTED CONTACT CLAN DONALD QUEENSLAND at [email protected]

04.01.2022 14 August 1863: The death of Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde. The subject of todays story is a military man who changed his surname under mysterious circumstances. Colin Macliver was born in Glasgow in 1792. He was the eldest child of John, a cabinetmaker, and Agnes (nee Campbell). Due to a family tragedy his care was taken over by an uncle who enrolled him at the Royal Military and Naval Academy. At some point before he enlisted in 1808 the young man changed his surname to Ca...mpbell. The reason was never clear but there were many fanciful stories once he became famous. Perhaps it was a simple as sharing a last name with his uncle, who was a Major, being advantageous for the new recruit? Although his military career saw him eventually promoted to the rank of Field Marshall, Campbells progress through the ranks was slow. As a young man Campbell saw action just weeks after enlisting, serving in the 9th Regiment of Foot in the Peninsular War from 1808, gaining recognition for his bravery. In particular, he led the forlorn hope (a type of suicide squad) in the Siege of San Sebastien in 1813, where he was wounded twice. His only brother died during the Peninsular War. You will find reports of his later military exploits in many sources. However, for todays story we decided to concentrate on just one battle during the Crimean war. The painting we posted earlier shows what is remembered as The Thin Red Line from the Battle of Balaclava in 1854. On 25 October 1854 the 93rd Highland Regiment troops held a second defensive line against the Russian Cavalry in the South Valley near Balaclava after the first defensive line failed. The Highland Regiment had their backs to the sea, but Campbell had a poor opinion of the Russian Cavalry that he arranged his troops in a two-deep firing line instead of the usual square formation with four lines. William Russell, a war correspondent writing for The Times, was there, writing, The Russians dash at the Highlanders. The ground flies beneath their horses' feet; gathering speed at every stride, they dash on towards that thin red streak topped with a line of steel. The thin red streak later became known as the thin red line. Campbell told his men, There is no retreat from here, men. You must die where you stand. The Russian Cavalry retreated after the third volley from Campbells men. Campbell was known for his military precision and prudence during battle, always ensuring his men suffered as few casualties as possible. He was made Baron Clyde in 1858. He died on this day in 1863 in Kent and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

04.01.2022 29 July: the day that keeps coming up for Mary Queen of Scots Todays Scottish history snippet describes a recurring relationship between the 29th July and Mary Queen of Scots. How many times can you find 29th July? Mary was born on 8 December 1542, the only surviving legitimate child of James 5th of Scotland. Her father died six days after her birth and she was crowned Queen of Scotland in 1543 before she was a year old. Scotland was ruled by regents while she was brought ...up in France from the age of five. Both the English and French kings tried to arrange her marriage to their sons in an attempt to gain control over Scotland. On 29th July 1548, after an English invasion aimed to secure her marriage to their prince, Mary was rescued from Dumbarton castle and taken to France. Her marriage to the French Dauphin was arranged when he was four years old and she was six. They married in April 1558 and although people commented on their differences (at 16 she was tall for her age and vivacious and clever while her 14 year old husband Frances was unusually short and had a stutter) from their first meeting they got on very well. When Frances became king of France Mary became Queen Regent of France as well as Queen of Scotland. Frances, who was always of a frail constitution, died suddenly in December 1560 from a middle ear infection that caused an abscess on his brain. When his brother, Charles 9th, took over the French throne things were less favourable politically for Mary so she returned to Scotland in August 1561. On 29 July 1565 Mary married Henry Stuart Lord Darnley. They were related through two different marriages of their grandmother, Margaret Tudor, and could both trace their ancestry back to James 2nd of Scotland and Henry 7th of England. Soon after the marriage Mary discovered that her new husband was vain, arrogant and had a violent streak. When she was six months pregnant with their child, he had her private secretary, David Rizzio, stabbed fifty-six times in front of the her. Just eight months after the birth of their son James (later James 6th of Scotland and 1st of the United Kingdom) Darnley was found murdered in his garden after his residence had been destroyed in an explosion. It was widely believed that James Hepburn the Earl of Bothwell had arranged Darnleys death. In May 1567 Bothwell married Mary in a controversial move that alienated her Catholic supporters as he had divorced his wife to marry her. Following an uprising against the couple Mary was forced to abdicate in favour of her son on 24 July 1567. Mary had miscarried twins a few days earlier. On 29 July 1567 James 6th was crowned King of Scotland. Mary appealed to her cousin Elizabeth 1st for help to regain her crown, but history once again did not smile on her and after a lengthy house arrest, she was executed on 8 February 1587, accused of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth in order to take her throne. See more

03.01.2022 12 August 1872: Andrew Smith- the doctor who collected reptiles Today’s subject is another Scot who is not very well known. Andrew Smith was a doctor and a zoologist who studied the zoology and anthropology of southern Africa. He was born in Hawick in December 1797. His father, Thomas, was a shepherd who later became a market gardener. Smith was apprenticed to a local doctor and then studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After joining the Army Medical Corps he went... first to Fort Pitt in Chatham and then to Nova Scotia, England, Malta and the Cape Colony (modern day South Africa) where he supervised the care of the soldiers guarding Grahamstown. He later established a dispensary for the indigenous people of the area. While in South Africa Smith led a number of expeditions to visit Bantu and Xhosa tribes, both at the bequest of the British government and to follow his own interest in anthropology and natural history which had first been started when at Fort Pitt. Smith became the first superintendent of the South African Museum of Natural History. While in South Africa he met a young Charles Darwin who was visiting on the Beagle in 1936 and the two men kept in touch. Darwin sponsored Smith to gain membership of the Royal Society in 1857. Many of the geological specimens Darwin brought back from his voyage were gifted by Smith. Smith returned to England at the beginning of 1837 and started work on his five volume work, Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa. Most of his thousands of collected animal specimens were sold and a large number ended up in the National Museum in Edinburgh. He was still in the army medical service and was promoted up the ranks and was appointed Director-General of the Army Medical service in 1853. He was responsible for organising the medical service during the Crimean War (1853-1856), amid controversy on the competence of the service. He was cleared of any issues and was created Knight Commander of the Bath in 1858. Smith retired shortly afterwards due to ill health. He died on 12 August 1872. Smith was keenly interested in reptiles and has a number of new species named after him, including a gecko, a lizard and a freshwater turtle.

03.01.2022 THE TARTAN DAY CHALLENGE Song No 24. Flower of Scotland written by Roy Williamson What else could the last song of the challenge be except the Scottish national anthem? Heres the Corries with an early version of their iconic song. We hope youve enjoyed the selection of songs.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RawfKi-8hvc

03.01.2022 28 July 1934: The day the post office blew up the mail Todays Scottish history snippet tells how an improvement in the postal services in the Outer Hebrides led to the mail being blown up. The island of Scarp no longer has a permanent population the last two families moved away in 1971. It was originally settled by eight farming families in 1810 and at its peak in 1881 the population reached 213 souls. Due to the small amount of fertile land on an island dominated by tw...Continue reading

02.01.2022 So, how are you liking out Scottish snippets? Did you check out the stories for Rabbie Burns? How many times did you see 29th July come up for Mary Queen of Scots? What is your favorite story so far? What was your favorite song in our tartan day challenge? Let us know!

02.01.2022 15 August: Two birthdays of Sir Walter Scott The 15th August is associated with two birthdays for Sir Walter Scott. The first is his actual birthday in 1771 in a third floor apartment in College Wynd, Edinburgh. He was the ninth child of Walter Scott, a solicitor, and Anne (nee Rutherford). Both sides of his family were well connected. Six of his siblings died in infancy and Scott contracted polio in 1773, which left him lame for his early childhood. This resulted in his be...ing sent to live in the Borders to improve his health and it was here that he first heard the tales and legends of Scotland from his Aunt Jenny. He had several visits to spa towns to help with his infirmity, including some time at Bath. In 1778 he returned to Edinburgh with a renewed health. At age 15 he was apprenticed in his fathers office, but he was also being exposed to many literary people, including Robert Burns. Scott had two careers: he was an advocate, judge and legal administer in his day job, but was also a poet, novelist, historian and playwright. Many of his literary works were inspired by old Scottish and German legends. Weve written about his role in the revival of Tartan and the visit of King George 4th (see the story on 9th August). The second birthday was the laying of the foundation stone of the Scott Monument on 15 August 1840. This Victorian Gothic monument stands in the Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh. Following Scotts death in 1832, a competition was held to design a monument. The winner was an unknown amateur architect, George Meikle Kemp. Kemp was not present when the monument was inaugurated on 15 August 1846 his son stood in his place. Kemp had unfortunately died one foggy evening in March 1844 after falling into Union Canal in the poor weather and drowning. The sculptor Sir John Steel designed the statue of Scott in the center of the monument and shows him seated ad writing with a quill pen, his dog Maida at his side.

02.01.2022 Todays story (14th August) is coming soon! Heres a hint.

01.01.2022 9 August 1822: The return of the King Today marks the anniversary of the departure from England of King George 4th on his way to Edinburgh the first British monarch to visit Scotland in over 170 years. The previous visit was by Charles 2nd in 1650 and it seems unbelievable that the rulers of Scotland had not visited for such a long time! George became king in 1820 but had served as Prince Regent from 1811 due to the illness of his father, George 3rd. The visit was stage m...anaged by Sir Walter Scott, who masterminded a spectacle full of pomp and ceremony which painted a romantic view of Scotland and Scottishness. The Kilts and tartan that had been banned in 1746 had led to a dearth of the traditional dress, particularly in the lowlands, something that the Dress Act Repeal in 1782 had not changed. At the time of the Kings visit tartan was usually seen only in army uniforms. Scotts organisation of the 21 day visit was designed to give the message that there was a romantic heritage that all Scots should aspire to. Scott ensured that all gentlemen attending the Highland Ball wore the ancient Highland dress if they were not in army uniform. The Kings outfit for the main ceremonies included a bright red Royal Tartan that we all recognise today as the Royal Stuart. The kilt, which was far too short, was accessorised with gold chains, a dirk, sword and pistols. George 4th was rather overweight and opted to wear pink tights under his kilt but neither of these was reflected in the official painting by Sir David Wilkie which was very flattering. George 4th only appeared in full Highland dress once but did opt to wear trews in the Royal Stuart on another day. The visit managed to improve the Kings popularity in Scotland. More importantly, the use of tartan and other Scottish items led to the modern image of Scottish national dress and achieved a mutual respect between many Lowlanders and Highlanders that had not been evident before the visit. The romantic revival of tartan was adopted by members elite society across Scotland and Europe. It is from this time that most associations between a clan and a particular tartan pattern emerged. See more

01.01.2022 THE TARTAN DAY CHALLENGE Song No 22. The Gael written by Dougie MacLean Heres one to get your blood pumping. It was used in the soundtrack for the movie, The Last of the Mohicans. There have been lots of cover versions, but this is my favourite by the band Albannach. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPzsmWMCMoc

01.01.2022 A great video from the National Theater of Scotland.