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Police Scotland are to pay thousands of pounds in damages to a street preacher who was arrested and detained in Glasgow in 2022. Angus Cameron, pastor of Cumnock Baptist Church, was told by the arresting officer that a complaint had been made about "homophobic language", a claim he strenuously denied.

On this date in 1697, Scottish medical student Thomas Aikenhead was hanged on the road from Edinburgh to Leith for blasphemy, an already-archaic punishment inflicted for what reads like headstrong youthful atheism of a decidedly garden variety. Aikenhead partook of the times’ emerging (albeit forbidden) store of humanist and skeptical literature, and chatted most unguardedly with University of Edinburgh “friends” who tattled to authorities to the extent that, not content with testifying against him, one published a pamphlet demanding the offender “atone with blood, the affronts of heaven’s offended throne.” Said authorities scarcely elevated the dignity of the temporal throne...

That prospectively apocalyptic year of 1666 saw the onset of the Scottish Covenanters‘ mass martyr-making under the English gallows. Three dozen or so were put to death in the aftermath of the Battle of Rullion Green. Among them, nine men — seven in Ayr, two in Edinburgh — paid with their necks on this date. The Covenanter tragedy stretches back to the first English Civil War, when English parliamentarians enlisted the aid of Scottish Presbyterians by agreeing to a covenant guaranteeing presbyterian church governance in Scotland and England. Essentially, that meant representative ecclesiastical authority, rather than top-down power from the...

Edinburgh, Scotland held a Christmas Eve 1715 hanging of a soldier for abortive plot in the abortive Jacobite rising of 1715 The plot was a bold conspiracy of Highlanders to seize Edinburgh Castle itself, which would have been every bit the coup it sounds like. Sergeant William Ainslie and two other soldiers of the garrison had been bribed to admit the plotters via a sally port. Once there, the Highlanders meant to seize the castle’s ample stock of weapons and cash, and also “fire three cannon; that when this signal should be heard by some men stationed on the opposite...

For thousands of years, our ancestors found solace in the winter solstice. Today, that belief is still reflected in the astonishing sight of the sun setting on Orkney's Maeshowe tomb. Located 10 miles off Scotland's north-eastern coast, the Orkney islands are a treasure trove of history, from the famous Neolithic village Skara Brae to the hauntingly beautiful Ring of Brodgar – a spellbinding stone circle that was a site of ritual and ceremony. However, when I visited another of Orkney's famous prehistoric sites, the Maeshowe tomb, my first impression was of an unremarkable green mound surrounded by a ditch. Despite...

Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf has sparked a diplomatic row by holding an unauthorized meeting with the Turkish president. Yousaf, roughly equivalent to a U.S. state governor, is a Pakistani-heritage Muslim. He has been pushing the British government to back an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and import thousands of Gazan refugees. Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, nominally a NATO ally, also backs a ceasefire. He has branded the West's support for Israel against Hamas "barbaric". By discussing a ceasefire with Erdogan at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), Yousaf breached diplomatic protocol. Foreign policy and defense are reserved to the...

A team of archaeologists, co-led by a researcher at the University of Southampton, believe they have located the site of the lost Monastery of Deer in Northeast Scotland.It is believed that the earliest written Scots Gaelic in the world was produced in the monastery in the late 11th and early 12th century. These texts, Gaelic land grants, were placed in the margins of the Book of Deer, a pocket gospel book originally written between 850AD and 1000AD.Academics have long speculated that these entries, or 'addenda' were added while the book was in the monastery. Archaeologists believe they have now found...

It may be the most bizarre claim about the Loch Ness monster yet – that she is an ‘algae-based creature’. That is the conclusion filmmakers have come to after using an innovative testing method following a sighting during the biggest hunt for Nessie in 50 years. On the August bank holiday, hundreds of volunteers descended on the loch to help track down the elusive beast once and for all. Among that number were Matty Wiles, 49 and Aga Balinska, 42. Before the official search kicked off, the pair went for an early morning swim at 6.30am, and saw two humps...

A 2000-year-old ancient Roman road was unearthed in Old Inn Cottage's garden near Stirling, Scotland. The site is located a few miles away from Stirling’s city center, next to the Old Stirling Bridge.It has been described as the most important road in Scottish history, the cobbled road was built by the Roman armies of General Julius Agricola in the 1st century AD and would have connected to a ford that crossed the River Forth.The road and the crossing would have been used again by the Romans in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD as units launched fresh invasions of Scotland...

Headlines were made in 1864 when a group of excavators uncovered evidence of an "ancient British city" near modern-day Edinburgh Airport...Subsequent excavations in the 20th century found that the Craigie Hill site was not actually an "ancient British city" as claimed by the 1864 headlines, but the remains of a Bronze Age hillfort, similar to others that were once ubiquitous in the Lothians...The area around Edinburgh Airport is famous for its prehistoric settlements. In 1830, archaeologists uncovered the remains of a stone circle called the Huly Hill Cairn, which today stands preserved as a peculiar oddity given its proximity to...

As if things weren’t peachy enough in Scotland, with wind farms, skyrocketing electricity prices, mandating heat pumps and forced upgrading of the insulation in your wee crofter’s cottage. The list is long and ignominious of what humiliations, disgraces, and suffering the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) has subjected their citizens to. Then again, they keep voting for them, so I will mitigate my sympathy a tad.The previous First Minister, a scandal plagued tiny tyrant known as Nicola Sturgeon, has been replaced by a charming young lad of Pakistani descent named Humza Yousaf.Don’t let the name or Scottish accent fool you. He’s...

According to the Scottish news outlet EdinburbghLive, the owner of a Tesla has been asked by the company to fork over the equivalent of more than $20,000 for repairs to a battery that was reportedly damaged by rain while it was parked on a street in the Scottish capital last week. Sound like it might be a problem? The owner sure thought so. According to the report, the vehicle belongs to Johnny Bacigalupo and Rob Hussey, a gay couple living in the Edinburgh suburbs. On Oct. 7, they drove into the city for dinner without any problem, but they found...

Carn Glas, near Inverness, is thought to date to the Neolithic period and be about 5,000 years old.It is Scotland's longest chambered cairn, measuring 116m (380ft) in length.Bones were removed from the site on Essich Moor by antiquarians in 1918, according to Historic Environment Scotland (HES).The new photographs include images in false colours that clearly show the shape of Carn Glas...HES describes Carn Glas as having significant archaeological importance due to its potential for improving understanding of Neolithic rituals and funeral practices.It comprises three interlinked cairns.Other sites from the same period in history are close by, and include a stone...

In the ever-expanding realm of self-proclaimed Christian leaders, few figures are as bewildering as Katie Souza. Armed with dubious teachings that dance on the fringes of Christian orthodoxy, she recently added to her repertoire of controversy by prophesying about none other than the Loch Ness Monster. While the Bible instructs us to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1) and to hold fast to sound doctrine (2 Timothy 4:3), Souza has ventured completely into sensationalism while diverting attention away from the true Gospel message. During her “prophetic message,” Souza claims that she was taken by God out into the ocean to...

The general lack of sources about the Picts and their way of life has led to numerous assumptions over the centuries. In the eighth century, during the early medieval period, for example, historians such as the Venerable Bede thought that the Picts emigrated from areas around the Aegean Sea or Eastern Europe and that they traced descent matrilineally, through the mother's side...In the newly published study, an international team of researchers extracted genetic information from eight human skeletons buried in two Pictish cemeteries — seven from Lundin Links and one from Balintore in modern-day Scotland...The team was able to extract...

A HOLIDAYMAKER is said to have captured the most exciting pictures to date of a monster in Loch Ness. But Chie Kelly kept the remarkable images to herself for five years because she was too afraid of being ridiculed. I FOUND NESSIE! I captured most exciting picture of Loch Ness Monster to date but kept it secret for years over fears of being ridiculed A HOLIDAYMAKER is said to have captured the most exciting pictures to date of a monster in Loch Ness. But Chie Kelly kept the remarkable images to herself for five years because she was too afraid...

The number of people in Scotland whose death was caused by alcohol has risen again to the highest level in 14 years. The latest figures from National Records of Scotland (NRS) show 1,276 people died from conditions caused by alcohol in 2022. This was 31 (2%) more than the previous year, which was the highest number since 2008. Male deaths - which were unchanged at 836 - again accounted for about two thirds of alcohol-specific deaths.

Mystery hunters converged on a Scottish lake on Saturday to look for signs of the mythical Loch Ness Monster. The Loch Ness Center said researchers would try to seek evidence of Nessie using thermal-imaging drones, infrared cameras and a hydrophone to detect underwater sounds in the lake’s murky waters. The two-day event is being billed as the biggest survey of the lake in 50 years, and includes volunteers scanning the water from boats and the lakeshore, with others around the world joining in with webcams. Alan McKenna of the Loch Ness Center said the aim was "to inspire a new...

Monster hunters have convened in the Scottish Highlands of the United Kingdom this weekend for a significant endeavor—the pursuit of the perpetually mysterious Loch Ness Monster. This marks the most extensive quest for the fabled creature in over half a century. Beneath the glistening surface of Loch Ness, there is said to reside Nessie, a mythical sea creature with a storied history of nearly 1,500 years. On the upcoming Saturday and Sunday (the 26th and 27th of August 2023), individuals passionate about monster investigations and those intrigued by Nessie’s legend are aiming to provide substantiation. The organizers, namely the Loch...

...The bottlenose dolphin is thought to have washed up on an ancient shoreline after the last Ice Age.Archaeologists have described the prehistoric discovery in Causewayhead, Stirling, as "the find of a lifetime".The father-of-four said he recognised the dolphin's skull by its long snout, rows of teeth and unmistakable shape.The bones were preserved in clay, around 80cm below the current ground level, for what is thought to have been up to 8,000 years.With them was a broken tool made from deer antler, which would have been used to carve the meat.It is thought the dolphin was made into a meal by...