Let’s look at some
facts:
Since before the Industrial Revolution,
Scots have been at the forefront of innovation and discovery
across a wide range of spheres: the steam engine, the
bicycle, tar macadam roads, the telephone, television,
the transistor, the motion picture, penicillin, electromagnetics,
radar, insulin and calculus are only a few of the most
significant products of Scottish ingenuity.
Amazingly, for a country whose population
has never been much in excess of 5 million, native Scots
or those descended directly from them have been the
recipients of some 11% of all the Nobel Prizes that
have been awarded.
Whatever its source, it's clear that
the ingenuity and inventiveness of the Scots have helped
shape the world in which we live today.
From the stone circles of Orkney to
the new parliament building in Edinburgh, Scotland's
dramatic history spans 8,000 years, years marked by
invasions and independence, wars and religious upheavals,
intrigues and subjugation. Yet it also saw the flowering
of an imagination and inventiveness across many different
fields of human endeavour and resulted in Scotland occupying
a pivotal position, not only in a British context but
in a European and worldwide one also - 19th-century
Glasgow's title as Second City of the British Empire
was no idle boast! Such a history has left its mark
on the nation's psyche - as well as the landscape -
and has contributed in no small way to the fierce pride
with which the Scots view themselves and their country
today.
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