Showing posts with the label Scotland

The Murders Written in Stone

Feb 3, 2020

The Ardwell House East Lodge sits right on the edge of A716 that runs along the east coast of the Rhins of Galloway, in southern Scotland. L...

Scuttling at Scapa Flow: When The German Navy Sank its Own Ships

Jan 27, 2020

The Armistice of 11 November 1918, that ended hostiles between the Allied and the Allies, left little for negotiation. The Germans were give...

The Locomotive That Walked: William Brunton’s Steam Horse

Jan 20, 2020

Railway engineering has come a long way from Richard Trevithick’s first steam locomotive to today’s high speed Maglev trains. Throughout th...

Tron: Scotland’s Public Weighing Scales

Jan 3, 2020

The tron at Stenton, East Lothian, Scotland. Image credit: Studio Karel/Shutterstock.com This is the village of Stenton, in East Lothian...

Why do People Spit on The Heart of Midlothian?

Dec 31, 2019

Spitting on the streets is not quite gentlemanly behavior, but on the Royal Mile in Edinburg, it is almost a ritual. The object of contemp...

Britain’s Hundred Million Pound Banknotes

Dec 20, 2019

Scottish banknotes are weird. Although they are used all over Scotland and the rest of the UK, they are not legal tender, which means a shop...

Why Mediaeval Europeans Slept Inside Boxes

Nov 1, 2019

For much of human history, privacy during bedtime was an alien concept. Many poor families lived in small houses, where there was only one o...

The Editor of Encyclopædia Britannica Once Wrote a Guidebook to Edinburg’s Prostitutes

Sep 13, 2019

In the late 18th century, tourists seeking carnal pleasure in Scotland’s capital city Edinburgh had a handy guidebook to start with. It det...

How Mediaeval Husbands Chastised Wives Who Talked Too Much

Aug 17, 2019

By putting a muzzle on them, of course. Known as Scold's bridle, these devices of torture and public humiliation were used mostly in En...

The Vitrified Forts of Scotland

Aug 6, 2019

Throughout the Bronze and the Iron Ages, Europeans have constructed hilltop forts and enclosures made of stone. About two hundred examples o...