Douglas MacQueen's blog

A digitally-reconstructed image of the face of the Scottish king Robert the Bruce has been unveiled by historians nearly 700 years after his death. The image was produced  using casts made from a skull unearthed when what is confidently believed to be the grave of Scotland’s most famous king was found when Dunfermline Abbey was being rebuilt. The reconstruction is the culmination of a two-year research project at universities in Glasgow and Liverpool.

The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register has confirmed that sightings of the Loch Ness Monster are at their highest since the year 2000. The most recent sighting was on August 21. Government worker Ian Campbell from Argyll, saw two creatures near the shore of Loch Ness (Scottish Gaelic: Loch Nis) with a measurement he estimated at over 30ft.

Glasgow artist Ken Currie's work, called "A Scottish Triptych: Nightshift, Departure, Saturdays", which depicts Glasgow in the 1980s, was sold this week for a record-breaking £100,000 at an auction in Edinburgh. Bonhams stated that it was a new world record for the artist having surpassed the previous figure of £31,000 set at the auctioneers in 2002.

A very rare map that was found stuffed up a chimney during a house renovation in the Scottish city of Aberdeen has been saved. The item was in extremely poor condition and appeared to be a little more than a bundle of rags when discovered. However, the finder suspected it might be something special and gave it to the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh to investigate. Conservation experts set to work in a painstaking and delicate restoration process in what they have described as one of the most complex ever conservation tasks they have undertaken.

It seems that there is little else left to say about the incompetence of the Scottish Labour Party. This is the Party that lost 40 of the 41 seats they held in Scotland in the 2015 United Kingdom general election. The Scottish National Party (SNP) won all but three seats in Scotland in a remarkable landslide during that election. Since then Scottish Labour has stumbled from one crises to another. In the Scottish Parliament elections in 2016 it lost a third of its seats, dropping from 37 to 24.

St. Andrew's Day (Scottish Gaelic: Là Naomh Aindrea) is Scotland's official national day. St Andrew has been the patron saint of Scotland from at least the mid tenth century and legend says long before. He was born in the village of Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee in the early 1st century and is the brother of St Peter. According to the Gospel of St John, Andrew was a follower of the preacher John the Baptist and then became a disciple of Jesus who he recognised as the Messiah. The name Andrew is Greek in origin.

News from the Celtic League:

Seaweed a spin off from the intense ‘STORM ANGUS’ that raged across the UK yesterday forced the shutdown of the nuclear power station at Torness in Scotland.

This report from the East Lothian Courier:

News from the Celtic League:

News from the Celtic League:

Four Scottish Fishermen were hospitalised this week after phosphorus based munitions they had hauled on board ignited and flooded the boat with toxic fumes.

The bat had been fishing in the Beaufort Dyke area and the incident once again highlights the dangers of the sea dump which straddles a vast sea area and contains a staggering I million tonnes of munitions (link):

A tidal power scheme in the Inner Sound of Scotland's Pentland Firth has begun to generate electricity. The Pentland Firth (Scottish Gaelic: An Caol Arcach) is a strait which separates the Orkney Islands from Caithness in the north of Scotland. The Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth, is the water that runs between the north Scottish mainland and Stroma Island. The Atlantis MeyGen project's single turbine, the first of four 1.5MW tidal stream turbines that are to be installed in the Inner Sound, has been exporting electricity.