🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 9 things about Scotland I learned last week (Issue 007)

Hey, folks! I spent last week in Scotland and picked up some fascinating facts along the way—from billion-year-old meteorites to eroding golf courses.

Here’s a round-up of what stuck with me:

• Scotland became Scotland only in the Late Middle Ages. Before that, it was known as Albania, while “Scotland” meant Ireland.

• Scotland’s global rise began with its schools, which produced ambitious graduates who looked beyond their borders. After a failed rebellion against the British crown in 1746, many Scots joined the army or emigrated, spreading their talents and shaping a lasting image of a proud, loyal, and often tragic people.

• Scotch whisky helped launch the container shipping revolution. In the 1960s, it was among the first goods sent across the Atlantic in steel tank containers—cutting theft on the docks and proving the system worked, writes Marc Levinson in The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.

• Rising seas and storms threaten 34 of Scotland’s coastal golf courses, with some losing up to seven metres in a year. Meanwhile, the industry fuels the crisis: in the US alone, golf courses use 5.7 billion litres of water daily and 100,000 tonnes of fertiliser each year.

• Edinburgh has banned ads for fossil fuels, SUVs, and air travel on council-owned sites—calling such promotion incompatible with its climate goals and a net zero future.

• Scotland’s mountain rescue teams were called out a record 1,000 times in 2024—many to save lost hikers misled by social media and bad navigation apps.

• In Scotland, just 421 people own half of all privately held rural land, highlighting one of the most extreme land ownership imbalances in Europe.

• In April 2025, Edinburgh University held a conference on “linguistic discrimination” after Scots students reported routine snobbery over their accents. With 70% of undergrads from outside Scotland—and 40% UK private-schooled—local students feel their voices aren’t welcome in their own country.

• A meteorite hit northwest Scotland a billion years ago. The strike happened around the same time early microbes were starting to spread on land, suggesting impacts like this may have helped shape life on Earth.

What I’ve been reading

• Who will profit from saving Scotland’s bogs: “Although rare in most of the world, peatlands cover about 20 per cent of Scotland, giving this country of just 5.5 million people an outsize role in the campaign to slow the planet’s rising temperature.”

• How a community-focused vision for net zero can revive local economies: In North Ayrshire, council-owned solar farms have brought in a £13 million surplus, now used to cut fuel poverty by making low-income homes more energy efficient.

• Beavers are back: In March 2025, beavers returned to England for the first time in 400 years. Four were brought from Scotland—where reintroduction began in 2009—and more are coming, with big hopes for boosting biodiversity and improving water systems.

That’s it for today! Thanks for reading! If you enjoy the newsletter, share it with a friend—or a dozen. And if you really enjoyed it, consider upgrading to a paid subscription—it helps support my work and means a lot.

Elia Kabanov is a science writer covering the past, present and future of technology (@metkere)

Illustration: Elia Kabanov feat. DALL-E.