Important North Britons

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SRD
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Re: Important North Britons

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1460: King James II was killed during the siege of Roxburgh Castle.
James was regarded as one of the better Scottish monarchs of the period, ending the feud between the Livingstons and Crichtons, and finally defeating the rebellious Douglases. He also established many trade links on the continent and through his wife, Mary of Gueldres, and the marriages of his sisters obtained many valuable political alliances. However, James took too close an interest in the new military invention, the cannon, and met his end, at the age of only thirty, when a Scottish cannon burst its casing killing the young king outright.

1855: Inventor George Johnstone was born at West Linton near Edinburgh.
A son of the manse, he trained as an engineer and, in 1894, became the first Scottish motorist driving an imported Daimler. By the following year he had invented his own car, "the Ghost Tram".
In 1896, he became the first person in Britain to be convicted of a motoring offence when police in Glasgow stopped him in St. Enoch's Square and he failed to convince the court that his car did not constitute a locomotive, and he incurred a fine.
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1588: The death of Archibald Douglas, the 8th Earl of Angus, the Scottish aristocrat and soldier.
Douglas became a formidable power in Scotland under the patronage of his uncle, the earl of Morton, the regent for young King James VI. However, after Morton's death his fall from grace was just as rapid. In 1581, the vengeful king charged him with treason and he was forced to flee to England. Douglas was a fierce Presbyterian and came to lead (with covert assistance from the English Queen Elizabeth) the other Protestant Scottish exiles in England. He was reconciled with the king in 1584 and returned home, but his strong religious views excluded him any position of power and influence under James.

1792: Edward Irving, the noted cleric, was born.
Irving was expelled from the Church of Scotland for preaching the sinful side of Christ's humanity, and His imminent Second Coming. He founded the "Holy Catholic Apostolic Church", popularly known as the "Irvingites". His friends and supporters included Charles Lamb, Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

1870: Sir Harry Lauder, Scottish music hall comedian, was born in Portobello.
The biggest Scottish entertainer of his age, his most popular songs included I Love a Lassie and Roamin' in the Gloamin. Lauder was the first entertainer to perform for soldiers at the front line during the First World War and earned a knighthood in 1919 for this and for his work in recruiting Scots for the army, including paying for 100 pipers to march through Scotland as a recruitment drive. His signature tune was Keep Right on to the End of the Road, supposedly written after he lost his only son during the Great War.
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Re: Important North Britons

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SRD wrote:
Little John wrote:I dont think he is going that far north. More tripe, I think.
Oi!!! Are you saying this thread's tripe??????????
I was thinking more of Yorkshire.
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Important North Britons

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1923 Scottish broadcaster, Eileen Mitchell, was born. Mitchell was the woman whose voice was known to millions through the phrase, "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin".

She presented BBC Radio's daily children's series Listen with Mother, and also sang many of the nursery rhymes in the programme on which she appeared for about 15 years. When the programme spawned BBC TV's Watch With Mother, she supplied one of the voices in The Woodentops.
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Re: Important North Britons

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Ah yes. I remember it well.
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1796: Scottish artist, David Allan, died.
Allan was noted for his historical subjects and portraits and was nicknamed the "Scottish Hogarth".
In addition to his portraits, Allan provided illustrations for Allan Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd and for some of the poems of Robert Burns, including engravings of Tam o'Shanter and The Cotter's Saturday Night.

1881: Sir Alexander Fleming, the Nobel prize-winning bacteriologist, was born.
Born near Darvel in rural Ayrshire, Fleming became a lecturer at St Mary's Medical School in London. After seeing front line service in the Army Medical Corps throughout the Great War, he returned to St Mary's and began his research into anti-bacterial substances. In 1928, whilst carrying out work on the influenza virus, he noticed that mould had accidentally developed on a staphylococcus culture plate and that the mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. This discovery fired Fleming's work and he found that a mould culture prevented growth of staphylococci, even when diluted 800 times. He named the active substance penicillin.
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1757: The famous engineer, Thomas Telford, was born in rural Dumfriesshire.
Telford went on to build many important works of engineering across Britain including the Menai Suspension Bridge and the Caledonian Canal. He was also responsible for the building of much of the road network in the Highlands, earning himself the nickname "The Colossus of Roads."

1913: Professor James Gordon, the Scottish industrial chemist and engineer, was born.
Gordon was a pioneer of materials science, which sought to explain the gap between chemistry and structural mechanics. In 1968, he published his findings in the ground-breaking, The New Science of Strong Materials.
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1784: Artist Allan Ramsay Jnr died.
Son of the poet Allan Ramsay Snr., he was a leading portrait painter of his day. Some of his subjects included King George III, historian Edward Gibbon, philosopher David Hume and Jacobite heroine Flora MacDonald. However not all those who sat for him were overjoyed with the results as French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau was reputed to be unimpressed by his portrait, although it did not prevent the two men from becoming friends.

1937: John Hodge, the Scottish Labour politician, died.
Hodge became the first Labour minister serving as Minister of Labour in the second coalition government during the First World War.
Hodge faced criticism from the left wing of the Labour Party for supporting the war, and for his harsh policies when dealing with striking workers during the war years.
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Re: Important North Britons

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Was he actually referred to as "Junior"? Seems a rather modern American term to me.
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If only to differentiate the generations. Of course you, with your classical education, would prefer pater and filium.
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1892: Poet Christopher Murray Grieve was born in Langholm.
Grieve wrote under the pseudonym, Hugh MacDiarmid, and is considered the driving force behind Scottish Literary Renaissance which took shape during the 1920s. MacDiarmind viewed his mission as rescuing Scottish culture and modernising it to reflect 20th Century Scotland. He also tried to resurrect the Scots language as a vital part of maintaning an independent Scottish culture.
His masterpiece, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, reflects his abhorrence at the way Scottish culture had developed. MacDiarmid remained a man of contradictions throughout his life being both a founder of the Naional Party of Scotland and a member of the Communist Party - although he was thrown out of both parties, but his influence as an artist can still be felt in today's Scottish writing.

1919: Andrew Carnegie, the Dunfermline-born steel industrialist and philanthropist, died.
Throughout his later life Carnegie established a number of foundations for education and research such as the Carnegie Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Carnegie himself was devastated that his attempts to prevent global war had come to nothing. In his essay, The Gospel of Wealth, he argued that after making their fortunes wealthy men should distribute the surplus for the general welfare; a practice he followed.
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Re: Important North Britons

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SRD wrote:If only to differentiate the generations. Of course you, with your classical education, would prefer pater and filium.
Look, mate. There's nuffin wrong with my education! I may have only gone to a Comprehensive, but I'll have you know I'm still on friendly terms with sum of my teachers!
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A year has passed so I suppose I'm going to have to be careful not to repeat myself.
1990: Roy Williamson, the Scottish folk musician and songwriter, died.
Williamson was one of the famous duo, the Corries, along with Ronnie Browne. It was Williamson who penned the song "Flower of Scotland", now used by Scottish sporting teams as an anthem.
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1867: Sir William Craigie, the Scottish lexicographer, was born.

Craigie was regarded as the most eminent lexicographer of his day and spent from 1901-1933 as joint editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. His other passion was the Scots language, and he proposed a Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue as early as 1919.

He began work on it later in life but had not managed to complete the work at his death.
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Re: Important North Britons

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SRD wrote:A year has passed so I suppose I'm going to have to be careful not to repeat myself.
Ah. good point.
1990: Roy Williamson, the Scottish folk musician and songwriter, died.
Williamson was one of the famous duo, the Corries, along with Ronnie Browne. It was Williamson who penned the song "Flower of Scotland", now used by Scottish sporting teams as an anthem.
I thought that was a traditional air.
Yes this is the real "Little John" (or it could be "colin")
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