Invention and discovery are just two of the many things the Scottish people take pride in. The Scots have been at the forefront of innovation and discovery since before the Industrial Revolution. Inventions such as the flush toilet, the telephone, the motion picture, penicillin, golf, finger printing, and T.V., are just a few of their major contributions.

Scottish history can be traced back over 14,000 years when the first humans began to inhabit what is now Scotland at the end of the, Devensian glaciation  the last ice age.

The recorded history of Scotland began with the arrival of the Roman Empire in Britain. The Romans occupied what is now England, Wales and the Scottish Lowlands and administered the area as a Roman province named Britannia.

The modern history of Scotland involves many battles with their English neighbors. The battle of Bannockburn was one of the most significant.  Robert the Bruce and the Scottish army defeated the English. Following the Acts of Union in 1707 which united Scotland with England into the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the subsequent Scottish Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, Scotland became one of the commercial, intellectual and industrial powerhouses of Europe

Although, Scotland remains a fiercely proud country and still apart of the United Kingdom, the Scottish people have their own parliament and most would consider themselves Scottish before British.

William Wallace was a Scottish patriot who vowed to free Scotland from the control of kings of England. With a small army, he defeated the large and better-equipped English army at the battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297. A year later, however, the English king himself marched north with his troops and overpowered Wallace's smaller army at Falkirk.

Wallace escaped to France where the French king refused to help him and threw him into jail. He returned to Scotland a year later. In 1305 he was captured by his enemies and cruelly executed. The Wallace Monument outside Stirling reminds all Scots of William Wallace, a man of great courage and brave heart.

scroll up more scroll down