Historic maps can help you better understand the lives of your ancestors, and can even clear up some mysteries, explains Paul F Cockburn. Some 14,000 years ago, in what is now Abauntz in the Navarra region of northern Spain, an unknown man or woman picked up a stone tablet and began to carve onto its […]
Tag Archives | Warners Group Publications
Bridging the Tay
Mention the words “Tay” and “Bridge”, and we’re all too easily inclined to add the word “Disaster”. However, with the addition of “Road”, it’s a different matter entirely: 50 years after its official opening – on 18 August, 1966 – by The Queen Mother, the Tay Road Bridge still successfully carries an average 26,000 vehicles across […]
The Day the Sun Turned Blue
Nowadays, when something newsworthy happens, it feels as if everyone turns to Facebook, Twitter and other social media to comment on – or even find out about – what’s going on. Things were clearly different in 1950; back then, many Scots’ reaction to anything strange was apparently to call their local newspaper for (as one […]
Ol’ Blue Eyes in Scotland
On the centenary of Frank Sinatra’s birth, Paul F Cockburn looks back to his two trips to Scotland. “The lean and hungry look came to the Glasgow Empire last night. But there was nothing lean or hungry about the audience or about the performance by Frank Sinatra,” according to the Daily Record on 7 July […]
A Sweet Success
For those of a certain age, the local sweet shop – with its walls lined with jars of sweets – retains a special place in our hearts. Debra Anderson has one particularly strong memory. “It was when I was allowed to go for the first time to the shop on my own,” she says. “I think […]
Remembering Quintinshill
Paul F Cockburn explores the memories of some of those who survived “the Railways’ Titantic” 100 years ago this month. Corporal Thomas Gleave was lucky. When he woke up in a Carlisle hospital, distraught and anxious parents by his bedside, he was surprised to learn that he had been unconscious for 10 days. But there […]
