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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...

There may be some truth to the myth of Merlin. On Tuesday, archeologists in Scotland revealed evidence of the legendary wizard’s death in Drumelzier between the 6th and 7th centuries — and the findings could change the way we tell Merlin’s tale. Merlin was said to have been a loyal advisor to King Arthur amid the Dark Ages before being imprisoned, killed and buried along the river Tweed, according to Vita Merlini Sylvestris (the Life of Merlin of the Forest), a medieval manuscript of his life which is currently held at the British Library. A new geological survey of the...

Newsweek reports that a kite-shaped ring with a piece of garnet in its center was uncovered at the site of Burghead Fort, which is located on the coast of northeastern Scotland, by researchers from the University of Aberdeen. Burghead Fort was a seat of power used by the Picts between the sixth and tenth centuries A.D. "There are very few Pictish rings which have ever been discovered and those that we do know about usually come from hoards which were placed in the ground deliberately for safekeeping in some way," said archaeologist Gordon Noble of the University of Aberdeen. "We...

Archaeologists revealed Tuesday that there may actually be some truth to the legend of Merlin and his death in Scotland. The legend goes that Merlin, loyal advisor to King Arthur, was imprisoned in Drumelzier in the Dark Ages, before being killed and buried on the banks of the river Tweed, according to a study published in the journal Archaeology Reports Online. A geophysical survey revealed that there is a grave-like pit in the region. When archaeologists started digging, what they found seemed quite unexpected. Excavations conducted at Tinnis Fort, which overlooks the area of Merlin’s grave in Drumelzier, found it...

An explosion put a dramatic end to a test fire of a new rocket being developed by the German company Rocket Factory Augsburg.The explosion occurred on Monday (Aug. 19) while Rocket Factory Augsbug (RFA) was test firing the first stage of its new RFA ONE rocket. The test was meant to lay the groundwork for a planned debut launch as early as this year from SaxaVord Spaceport, a new facility being developed in the Shetland Islands, around 100 miles (160 kilometers) northeast of the Scottish mainland.A video published by the BBC shows the rocket engulfed in flames after an explosion...

The central six-ton altar stone at Stonehenge may have come from more than 450 miles away, according to a new study published in the scientific journal Nature. Stonehenge is thought to have been erected in several phases between 3100 BCE and 1600 BCE, with the circle of large sarsen stones placed there between 2600 BCE and 2400 BCE by Neolithic and Bronze Age people. While larger local stones may have been moved by hundreds of individuals with ropes and log rollers, the Welsh bluestones could have been transported by sea using rafts. Related Articles Researchers begin excavating a site in...

Cosmos Magazine reports that the Altar Stone at Stonehenge, which weighs more than six tons, may have been transported to southwestern England from Scotland. The Altar Stone currently rests under two toppled sarsen stones at the site. Anthony Clarke of Curtin University and his colleagues analyzed the composition of the minerals in the Altar Stone with mass spectrometry, and found that it has a distinct chemical fingerprint matching rocks in Scotland's Orcadian Basin, which is located more than 460 miles away. "Given its Scottish origins, the findings raise fascinating questions, considering the technological constraints of the Neolithic era, as to...

American comedian Reginald D. Hunter made an anti-Israel comment during a stand-up show in Edinburgh, UK, sparking a show of anti-Israel sentiment from the audience and animosity towards an Israeli couple who held front-row tickets, The Telegraph's Dominic Cavendish reported. At the Sunday night performance, Hunter compared a scene in a documentary about an abusive wife claiming her husband was abusive to Israel's self-defense in its war against Hamas in Gaza. Commenting on the documentary scene, Hunter said, "My God, it’s like being married to Israel." Some in the audience laughed at the remark, but a couple in the front...

After 20 years, excavation work at Orkney's Ness of Brodgar will come to a close at the end of this week (16th August).Over the last two decades, this sprawling dig in the heart of Orkney's World Heritage Site has become one of the most important archaeological projects in the world. It has revealed a huge complex of Neolithic buildings covering three hectares, with more lying undisturbed across this ancient landscape.Finds have included beautiful decorated and painted stones, polished axe heads, carved stone balls, and even human and animal bones. But more than that, the excavation has changed the way we...

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is seeking to reset relations at home and abroad. During a visit Sunday to Edinburgh, that he billed as an “immediate reset” with the regional governments of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, Starmer said he would also seek to improve the U.K.'s “botched” trade deal with the European Union. “I do think that we can get a much better deal than the botched deal that (former Prime Minister) Boris Johnson saddled the U.K. with,” he said in reference to the pact negotiated after Brexit. […] Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said Sunday on Sky News that...

In the final row of graves in an obscure cemetery in southern Spain, is a tomb dedicated to William Martin - a British officer killed during the Second World War. Except that Martin wasn't real. He was invented by British spies as part of a daring and successful plot to fool Hitler about the invasion of Sicily, using the corpse of an unknown man dressed up like an officer and carrying a case full of fake documents. Now, ahead of the release of new film Operation Mincemeat which documents the mission, calls are growing to exhume the grave so the...

The number of people using Gaelic has increased across Scotland despite a decline in the language's heartland, according to the latest census data. Experts say the increase in Gaelic medium education (GME) accounts for the rise. However, Gaelic is now a minority language in the Western Isles - while 52% reported speaking Gaelic in 2011, the figure in 2022 was 45%. Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes told BBC Scotland that Scottish Gaelic was part of a "modern, diverse Scotland". Ms Forbes – who is also minister for Gaelic – said she was “extremely optimistic” about the future of the language....

Two police officers have been injured in an incident in Renfrewshire, where a man was seen running with a chainsaw. A 27-year-old man was arrested after the disturbance on Glasgow Road, Paisley, which also saw a vehicle crash into a stationary police car. Footage shared on social media shows a man pursuing an officer while brandishing the weapon, shortly after the crash at about 13:00. Police Scotland said there were no other injuries and there was no wider risk to the public. Images from the scene show a police car crashed through a garden wall and a dark-coloured Volkswagen with...

Transcript Search in video 0:00 as history continues evolving with Time 0:01 new and old countries come in and out of 0:03 existence pretty much all the time 0:05 dozens of new UN recognized countries 0:07 have come into existence in only the 0:08 past 30 plus years since the Cold War 0:10 Began coming to a close back in 1990 and 0:12 as a result the world map has officially 0:14 changed dozens of times in many of our 0:16 lifetimes East Germany faded out of 0:18 existence in 1990 when it was legally 0:20 absorbed by West Germany...

Riley Gaines hit the nail on the head: "It's astounding that we live in a time where this headline exists."A landmark shift. Doctors assert that biology exists is a landmark shift. We live in a time of utter insanity. What next? Perhaps we won't burn witches at the stake? No longer use trial by combat to determine guilt or innocence? Give up human sacrifice?Imagine the possibilities! With a turn toward science we could soon have steam engines, too.“NHS to declare sex is biological fact in landmark shift…”Imagine you’d been in a coma for the past decade and woke up to...

Scotland’s new “hate crime” law already is demonstrating how it will be used to squash dissent and free speech. The so-called Hate Crime and Public Order Act, which went into force in Scotland on April Fools’ Day, adds age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, and transgender identity to a list of protected classes. The law provides for various potential punishments, including jail time. The new law has been fiercely criticized by author J.K. Rowling, creator of the “Harry Potter” series, and many others who rightly see it as an attack on the freedom of speech. Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf said...

Sometimes, it’s helpful to receive the occasional reminder that incompetent politicians and toxic identity politics are not the sole purview of the United States. As it happens, our allies across the pond are just as capable of stoking pointless factionalism among minorities and white residents as our own homegrown politicians. The politician providing us this example today is British far-left Parliamentary candidate George Galloway, whose different letters sent to his Muslim and Caucasian constituents are going viral for all the wrong reasons. As seen in this post on the social media platform X, which already garnered 2.3 million views, Galloway...

The recent election of George Galloway in the UK is another chapter in the career of this fascinating politician, famous the world over for appealing to Muslim voters wherever he goes.

Humza Yousaf, the left-separatist First Minister of Scotland, is taking a vacation in Qatar, the Gulf dictatorship that hosts the most senior leaders of the Hamas terror organization. Whether Yousaf, roughly equivalent to a U.S. state governor, intends to meet with the Qatari or Hamas leadership is unclear, but he has previously been reprimanded for holding unauthorized talks on the Israel-Hamas war with the President of Turkey. He has previously argued a peace deal should be brokered through the Qataris. While his official stance on Hamas is that their terror raid on October 7th was an “atrocity,” he vowed the...

Seventy-one years ago, a schoolboy in Scotland was digging up potatoes as a punishment when he discovered an ancient Egyptian statue...Between 1952 and 1984, several antique statues were found on the grounds of Melville House... Teachers and pupils brought each new discovery to museum curators and experts, who identified the statues as ancient Egyptian artifacts, but no one could figure out how they had ended up there...The ancient collection includes a nearly 4,000-year-old statue head carved out of red sandstone, which Maitland described as a "masterpiece of Egyptian sculpture," as well as several bronze and ceramic figurines dating to between...