NOT GENEALOGY BUT INTERESTING SCOTTISH CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE WORLD......little known & well known The people of a country are its greatest assest.  Many Scots have left this country over the ages to flee persecution by cruel landowners, or poverty and lack of opportunity. Many have made outstanding contributions across the world. It is said that today there are five times as many Scots, and their descendants living out with Scotland as there are living at home.   Scotland is known for the ingenuity and inventiveness of its people. Scottish by birth or descent only represent around one half of one percent of the world's population, yet amazingly people of entirely or partly Scottish ancestry have been the recipients of of eleven percent of all the Nobel Prizes which have been awarded. Scots have always placed great importance on education and this must have contributed to the string of inventions and discoveries, many of which have shaped the modern world we live in. Here is a list of some of the most significant; The steam engine, the bicycle, , the telephone, television, the transistor, the motion picture, penicillin,  the pocket calculator, radar, insulin, to name a few this list is by no means exhaustive. Here is one, that I would bet an awful lot of people didn't know, Coca Cola was a lemonade type drink flavoured with syrup from Kola nuts and was popular in Scotland from 1873. Scotland was  probably the only place where Kola existed as a soft drink, traditionally known in the trade as Scotch Kola. In 1879, an American trade writer recorded. In Scotland they have a drink called Kola it is much thought of by the natives and is flavoured in various ways after the fashion of meads, sherberts, and sherries. It could presumably be tried in the United States of America by an enterprising bottler - And the rest is history, as the saying goes!! There is a book out on the market called, How the Scots Invented The Modern World by Arthur Herma Spell Checker   Don't worry about spelling, just use your spell ckecker like I do....... Eye halve a spell chequer It came with my pee sea It plainly marquees four my revue Miss steaks eye kin knot sea. Eye strike a key and type a word And weight four it too say Weather eye am wrong oar write It shows me wright a weigh As soon as a mist ache is maid It knows bee fore two long And eye can put the error rite Its rare lea ever wrong. Eye have run this poem threw it Eye am shore your pleased two no Its letter perfect awl the weigh My chequer tolled me sew See how eazy it is......Mac   What Can Cause a Name Change The variety of surnames within the MacLachlan Clan does not represent individual sub-clans and/or septs. Instead, it represents the affects of phonetic spelling, marriage, migration and occupation. The discussion below details some of the common reasons our name is spelled differently. Phonetics At one time, the Clerks and Religious Clerics were about the only individuals who were literate. As such, the spelling of an individual's name would depend on the recorder of the civil records and would tend to be spelled phonetically. Since most of the early immigrants from Scotland were illiterate, Immigration Officers would often spell the names phonetically. Legal Entanglement Many names were changed as the result of flight following the loss in a conflict or as the result of an improper/illegal action. This type of change could be thought of as using an alias. In the most notorious case, almost romanticized in some modern literature, Clan MacGregor's name was outlawed. As a result, clan members adopted other names, most commonly colors such as White and Black) for their own protection. Hereditary According to some family legends, a disagreement between generations in a family could result in variations in the spelling of the name. Others might change the name simply because they did not like how it was spelled. So it might be wise to keep a family in mind, even if they do not spell it exactly the way you do, or are used to seeing it. Good Hunting, Mac  St Andrews Day Saint Andrew is the Patron Saint of Scotland, and St. Andrew's Day is celebrated by Scots around the world on the 30th November. He is thought to have been the younger brother of  Simon Peter i.e. Saint Peter and both became apostles of Jesus Christ.  Although not much more is known about him, it is thought that he was crucified by the Romans, the diagonal shape of this cross being the basis for the Cross of St. Andrew which appears on the Scottish Flag.  As legend would have it, a Greek Monk called St. Rule had a dream telling of the  removal of St. Andrew's remains to Constantinople by Constantine The Great,  and was instructed by an angel to find them and take as much of them as he could to the "ends of the earth" for safe-keeping. St. Rule took various body parts from St. Andrew's tomb and followed the  instructions he had been given in his dream. However, on his journey he was shipwrecked off the east coast of Scotland. The relics were housed for a while in the Cathedral of St. Andrews in 1160, however they are now lost, probably destroyed during the Scottish Reformation.