50 Fun Facts About Scottish History

The Roman name Picti, first recorded in 297 for the tribes north of the Forth, is usually explained as meaning what?

Painted people is the usual reading of Picti, from the Latin pingere, 'to paint', and a writer around 404 described designs on the bodies of dying Picts. They left carved symbol stones but almost no writing.

Unlike in Shakespeare, the real Macbeth killed which king in battle in 1040 rather than murdering a sleeping guest?

Duncan I died in action after launching an attack into Moray, Macbeth's territory, and was a young man rather than the aged victim of the play. Macbeth then ruled seventeen years before his death at Lumphanan in 1057.

Malcolm III, who killed Macbeth at Lumphanan in 1057, carried the Gaelic nickname Canmore, meaning literally what?

Big head is the literal sense of ceann mòr, though it was understood as 'great chief', and the Canmore dynasty it named ruled Scotland into the thirteenth century. Malcolm's queen, Margaret, was later made a saint.

Scotland's succession crisis began in 1286 when Alexander III, riding to Kinghorn in the dark, died how?

Falling from his horse near the shore at Kinghorn killed Alexander III, who was hurrying to reach his new queen for her birthday the next day. His only heir was a three-year-old granddaughter living abroad.

A captain from which clan led the troops lodged as guests in Glencoe before the massacre of 13 February 1692?

Campbell was the name of Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, who commanded the troops billeted on the MacDonalds of Glencoe, and the breach of hospitality made the killings infamous. The chief had sworn his oath to William days late.

On 19 August 1745 the Young Pretender raised his standard before some 700 Highlanders at which spot on Loch Shiel?

Glenfinnan saw the Royal Standard raised to launch the last Jacobite rising, witnessed by a crowd the prince's aide estimated at around 700 Highlanders. Within a month the rebels had taken Edinburgh.

Reached on 4 December 1745, which English town was the furthest south the Jacobite army got before turning back?

Derby was the high-water mark of the rising, and the Jacobite leaders retreated because the promised French landing and English reinforcements never appeared. The decision was taken at a council held in Exeter House the next day.

In 1746 Flora MacDonald smuggled Bonnie Prince Charlie from the Outer Hebrides to Skye by disguising him as what?

Her Irish maid, named Betty Burke, was the cover under which the prince crossed to Skye in a party of eight on passes issued for the journey. Flora was imprisoned in the Tower of London for her part and later emigrated to North Carolina.

Which deputy to Hitler flew solo to Scotland on 10 May 1941, hoping to open peace talks through the Duke of Hamilton?

Rudolf Hess parachuted from his Messerschmitt Bf 110 as its fuel ran out, and was held for the rest of the war before being tried at Nuremberg. The Duke of Hamilton was a fellow aviator Hess wrongly believed opposed the war.

On 21 June 1919 German crews scuttled their own interned High Seas Fleet at which Royal Navy anchorage in Orkney?

Scapa Flow saw 52 of the 74 interned German vessels go down in a single afternoon because Admiral von Reuter feared the British would seize them under the Versailles terms. British guard ships managed to beach some of the rest.

Tacitus credited which Caledonian chief with 'they make a desert and call it peace' before Mons Graupius in AD 83 or 84?

Calgacus appears in a single source, Tacitus's Agricola, and some historians argue the chieftain was invented to voice the historian's own politics. His name is usually taken to mean 'swordsman'.

Which turf Roman frontier, begun in AD 142 between the Forth and Clyde, was given up eight years after completion?

Antonine Wall was meant to supersede Hadrian's Wall, but the legions pulled back south and its turf rampart has largely weathered away. Its emperor, Antoninus Pius, never set foot in Britain.

In 563 Columba sailed from Ireland with twelve companions and founded the monastery on which small Hebridean island?

Iona was then part of the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata, and its monks are believed to have produced the Book of Kells in the years before 800. The island remains a place of Christian pilgrimage.

Dál Riata, the Gaelic kingdom ruled from the hillfort of Dunadd, covered which modern region plus part of Antrim?

Argyll takes its name from Airer Goídel, 'coast of the Gaels', and its four kindreds were based in Kintyre, Islay, Lorn and Cowal. The kingdom straddled the sea to north-east Ireland.

By a 1266 treaty, three years after the Battle of Largs, which kingdom ceded the Hebrides and Man to Scotland?

Norway had formally held the islands since 1098, and Largs itself was so inconclusive that both sides claimed it. Scotland paid 4,000 marks plus a 100-mark annuity and confirmed Norwegian rule over Orkney and Shetland.

Which claimant, chosen as king by Edward I in the Great Cause of 1292, was mocked as Toom Tabard, or 'empty coat'?

John Balliol had the senior genealogical claim among thirteen competitors, but Edward treated him as a vassal and forced his abdication in 1296. The nickname captured a king who seemed to have no power inside the robes.

After which defeat by Edward I on 22 July 1298 did William Wallace resign as Guardian of Scotland?

Falkirk broke the Scottish spear-rings with English archers, ending Wallace's year as Guardian after his triumph the previous September. He spent the next years seeking help abroad before his capture in 1305.

Robert the Bruce was excommunicated for killing his rival John Comyn in a friary church in which town in 1306?

Dumfries was where the two rivals met in the friars' chapel and came to blows, and six weeks later Bruce had himself inaugurated as king at Scone. The killing made peace with Comyn's powerful kin impossible.

Where was Robert the Bruce's heart finally buried after Sir James Douglas carried it towards the Holy Land in 1330?

Melrose Abbey received the heart after Douglas, who wore its silver casket on a chain round his neck, died fighting the Moors of Granada on the way. Bruce's body lies at Dunfermline and his embalmed organs at Dumbarton.

James I of Scotland was assassinated on 20 February 1437, in a failed coup led by his uncle, in which town?

Perth was a favoured royal residence where James had founded a Carthusian priory, and the plot was led by Walter Stewart, Earl of Atholl. The king's assertive rule had alienated much of the nobility.

James II of Scotland died on 3 August 1460 while besieging English-held Roxburgh Castle, when what happened beside him?

A cannon exploded as the king stood beside one of his bombards, killing him at a siege his own father had attempted and failed in 1436. He had seized the moment while England was distracted by the Wars of the Roses.

James III of Scotland was killed at Sauchieburn near Stirling in June 1488, facing rebel nobles nominally led by whom?

His own son, the fifteen-year-old Duke of Rothesay, was the rebels' figurehead and succeeded as James IV. The father had already been imprisoned once by his nobles, in 1482, before being restored to power.

Henry VIII's 1540s campaign to force the infant Mary, Queen of Scots to marry his son Edward is remembered as what?

The Rough Wooing ended in failure when the Scots sent the five-year-old queen to France in 1548 to be raised at the French court instead. She was betrothed to the Dauphin the same year.

Weeks after Darnley's 1567 murder at Kirk o' Field, Mary, Queen of Scots married which nobleman widely blamed for it?

The Earl of Bothwell had carried kegs of gunpowder to Darnley's lodging himself, and the marriage provoked the rising that cost Mary her throne. He fled, was imprisoned in Denmark and died at Dragsholm Castle in 1578.

Eleven days after escaping Lochleven Castle in May 1568, Mary, Queen of Scots lost which battle and fled to England?

Langside was where Mary's 6,000 men were beaten by the smaller force of her half-brother the Earl of Moray, regent for her infant son. She crossed into England within days and never returned.

When Scotland moved New Year's Day to 1 January in 1600, some 150 years before England, which date did it abandon?

25 March, the feast of the Annunciation, remained England's legal New Year until 1752, which is why the UK tax year still ends on 5 April. Scotland's switch put it in step with France, which had changed in 1564.

After a French fleet took St Andrews Castle in June 1547, the reformer John Knox spent nineteen months doing what?

Rowing as a galley slave, chained to a bench under an officer with a whip, was Knox's punishment for serving as chaplain to the Protestant garrison. He later wintered on the Loire before his release in 1549.

James VI, who sat in on the 1590 North Berwick witch trials, wrote which 1597 treatise endorsing witch-hunting?

Daemonologie frames witchcraft as 'treason against God' and was written partly to rebut sceptics like Reginald Scot, whose Discoverie of Witchcraft mocked the whole idea. It is believed to be a main source for Shakespeare's Macbeth.

How did market-trader Jenny Geddes reputedly protest the new prayer book in St Giles', Edinburgh, on 23 July 1637?

Throwing a stool at the head of the dean reading the service set off riots that spread across Scotland and led within a year to the National Covenant. Robert Burns later named his mare after her.

Where were the Honours of Scotland hidden from Cromwell's army in 1651, before two women smuggled them out in sacks?

Dunnottar Castle, a clifftop fortress in Kincardineshire, held the regalia until a minister's wife carried them off over three visits in 1652 and buried them under her kirk floor at Kinneff. They were recovered after the Restoration.

William Paterson, chief promoter of Scotland's 1698 Darien colony, had in 1694 co-founded which institution?

The Bank of England grew from Paterson's proposal to lend £1.2 million to the government in return for banking privileges, yet he quit its board within a year. He then moved to Edinburgh to sell the Darién plan.

Scotland's Darien venture of the 1690s, which swallowed about a fifth of the nation's wealth, named its colony what?

New Caledonia was the name given to the settlement in the Darién Gap after the Company of Scotland raised £400,000 in a few weeks. More than 80 per cent of the settlers died within a year and the site was abandoned twice.

Article 15 of the Treaty of Union granted Scotland £398,085 and ten shillings, a payment known by what name?

The Equivalent was meant to offset Scotland's share of England's £18 million national debt, but most of it went to compensate Darien investors, who got 58.6 per cent of the fund. Scotland had no national debt of its own at the time.

Which nobleman launched the 1715 Jacobite rising at Braemar in Aberdeenshire and fought indecisively at Sheriffmuir?

The Earl of Mar started the rising without any commission from the exiled James, who arrived late and went back to France in February 1716. Another Jacobite force surrendered at Preston the day after Sheriffmuir.

The small Jacobite rising of 1719, ended at the Battle of Glen Shiel in June, was backed by marines from which country?

Spain was then fighting Britain in the War of the Quadruple Alliance and planned a 5,000-strong landing in England, but storms wrecked the main fleet and only the Scottish diversion landed. Its troops came ashore at Stornoway.

Where in East Lothian did the Jacobites rout Sir John Cope's army in under half an hour on 21 September 1745?

Prestonpans was decided by a Highland charge that broke Cope's inexperienced recruits, and the victory turned the rising into a serious threat to the government. Much of the regular army was away in Flanders at the time.

The first phase of the Highland Clearances, from about 1750, replaced mixed cattle-and-crop husbandry with what?

Large sheep farms needed far fewer hands than the old townships, so tenants were moved to coastal smallholdings or given assisted passages to emigrate. The evictions ran in two main phases between 1750 and 1860.

Which Highland small tenants gained security of tenure under an 1886 act that followed the Napier Commission of 1883?

Crofters gained fixed tenure, fair rents and compensation for improvements under an act one historian called 'the Magna Carta of the Highlands and Islands'. It also created the first Crofters Commission to settle disputes.

Which 'Father of Modern Geology' read his Theory of the Earth to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785?

James Hutton argued from rock formations like Siccar Point and Salisbury Crags that the Earth was shaped over immense spans of time, not a few thousand years. He worked alongside the mathematician John Playfair.

Which Scottish chemist identified 'fixed air', now called carbon dioxide, and introduced the idea of latent heat?

Joseph Black found the gas while studying magnesium carbonate as a kidney-stone treatment, then taught chemistry at Glasgow for ten years before moving to Edinburgh in 1766. His balance was far more accurate than any rival's.

As an instrument maker at Glasgow University, James Watt devised which improvement to the Newcomen steam engine?

The separate condenser stopped the cylinder being cooled on every stroke, radically cutting the coal a Newcomen engine burned. Watt struggled to commercialise it until his 1775 partnership with Matthew Boulton.

Which commodity made the fortunes of Glasgow's eighteenth-century 'Lords', who won a French import monopoly in 1747?

Tobacco grown by enslaved labour in the American colonies reached Glasgow because the Clyde caught the westerlies, and the 1707 Union had opened England's colonies to Scots ships. The profits built the Merchant City.

Which Clydeside mill village, opened by David Dale in 1786 and later run by Robert Owen, is a World Heritage Site?

New Lanark used Richard Arkwright's water-powered spinning machinery and became Owen's showcase for decent housing and schooling, including Britain's first infants' school in 1817. It was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2001.

Cunard's Queen Mary, launched in 1934, was built as 'Hull Number 534' at John Brown's yard in which Clyde town?

Clydebank's river had to be deepened and widened before the ship could be launched, after work on her had stalled in the Depression. She is now a hotel and museum at Long Beach, California.

Which charge replaced domestic rates in Scotland from 1989, a full year before it reached England and Wales?

The poll tax, officially the Community Charge, was trialled on Scotland first, and mass non-payment campaigns began there before the tax sparked riots in London. Scotland wrote off £425 million of arrears in 2015.

Scotland's 1979 devolution referendum won 51.6% of votes cast yet failed, because an amendment demanded what?

40% of the electorate had to vote yes under the rule added by Labour MP George Cunningham, and an out-of-date register made that almost unattainable. The Scotland Act was repealed and devolution waited another twenty years.

The devolution referendum of 11 September 1997 put a second question to Scots: should the new Parliament have what?

Tax-varying powers also won a majority, making it the only major UK referendum to ask voters two questions on one day. Turnout was 60.4 per cent.

Who was Scotland's first First Minister after devolution, serving until his sudden death in October 2000?

Donald Dewar was called the 'Father of the Nation', having steered the Scotland Act through Westminster as Secretary of State for Scotland from 1997. He had represented Glasgow constituencies as an MP since 1978.

Where in Edinburgh was the National Covenant against the king's religious reforms first signed on 28 February 1638?

Greyfriars Kirk hosted the first signatures, and copies were then carried across Scotland for thousands more to add their names. The signatories became known as Covenanters.

Which factor to the Countess of Sutherland was tried for culpable homicide over evictions and acquitted in April 1816?

Patrick Sellar, an Edinburgh-trained lawyer, was descended from a cottar cleared by an improving landlord, and remained the focus of anger over the Sutherland evictions long after his trial. He went on to farm on a large scale himself.