Q-Aye! – The Scottish Facts You Need To Know | Part 4


Q-Aye Scotland facts

 Put yourself to the test with our list of 30 essential weird and wonderful Scottish facts. How many do you know?

 

Trains hold special meaning for author JK Rowling

 

16.  JK Rowling’s parents met on a train to Arbroath in 1964. They were both heading there for military postings.

 

17.  At some pedestrian crossings in Japan, the sound indicating that a walker can cross is a rendition of Rabbie Burns’s “Comin’ Thro the Rye”.

 

18. As a boy, Scots inventor Alexander Graham Bell made a talking doll that said, “mama.” It was so convincing that his neighbours began hunting for an abandoned baby!

 

19. A Scot, Edinburgh-born George Cleghorn, invented that quintessentially English tipple, the gin and tonic!

 

20. Word up! Rap battles where two or more artists trade rhyming insults is derived from the medieval Scottish art of “flyting” and travelled to the US via slave owners.

 

MORE: See next 5 facts

 

PREVIOUS: See previous 5 facts