Scottish Clan & Tartan Information Center

11/20/2025

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿💙🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

11/20/2025

World’s only 9-barrel flintlock musket.

Smallest guy in the squad will hump it.

---Mud

Credit: Military Historia

11/20/2025

November 20, 1767
The Townshend Acts go into effect. These were a series of laws created to bring in revenue and gain more control over the Colonies.
The five laws most often mentioned were;
Revenue Act of 1767,
Indemnity Act,
Commissioners of Customs Act,
Vice Admiralty Court Act,
New York Restraining Act.

Taxing items that the Colonist were not allowed to purchase from anyone but England and then tightening laws so that they could not smuggle in other goods and giving broad new powers to new Crown controlled courts made up the core of these laws.

Maybe the most important and most foolish was that the new laws sent British soldiers to occupy Boston and insure compliance.
The fire was lit under the teapot of Boston and it was only a matter of time before it would boil over.

11/20/2025

11/20/2025

Lee Marvin stood on the set of “The Big Red One” in 1979 holding a prop rifle that felt insultingly light. The producers told him the real M1 Garand was too heavy for long shooting days. Marvin set the prop on the ground and said he would not fake the weight of a weapon he had once carried through the Pacific while men died around him. Everyone went quiet. They had forgotten he was not just an actor. He was a veteran who had earned his scars.
Lee Marvin lived two lives before Hollywood ever knew his name. The first was carved into the volcanic ridges of Saipan in 1944. He served in the Marine Corps, fought in brutal close-range combat, and took machine-gun fire that tore into his sciatic nerve. He spent thirteen months recovering at a naval hospital, walking with pain that never left him. He kept the names of the men he lost written in a small notebook he carried for decades. When he acted in war films, he made sure their memory shaped every frame.
His defiance on “The Big Red One” came from that past. Director Samuel Fuller was also a veteran and wanted truth, not glamor. But the studio pushed for shortcuts. Lighter rifles. Cleaner uniforms. More heroic poses. Marvin refused. He told Fuller, “A soldier looks like he carries weight.” He meant physical weight. He meant memory. He meant the heaviness that never leaves combat survivors. Fuller backed him. The studio relented.
Marvin carried that integrity into every set. During “Point Blank,” he rejected a rewrite that softened his character’s rage. He walked into the writer’s trailer, placed the new pages on the table, and said, “Men like this exist. Tell the truth or do not tell it at all.” The director later said Marvin’s stare felt like a verdict. The script returned to its original grit.
He was equally protective of the actors around him. While filming “Cat Ballou,” he insisted the stunt team get equal safety gear after noticing they were given cheaper padding than the cast. When a producer argued, Marvin threatened to walk. The next morning, every stuntman had upgraded equipment.
People often misunderstood the quiet behind his gravel voice. They thought it was a persona. It was not. It was a Marine who had seen enough death to know bravado was cheap and honesty was rare.
Late in life, when someone asked why he always fought for authenticity, Marvin rested his hand on his old Marine Corps ring and answered with a line that explained everything. “If you have lived the real thing, you do not pretend the real thing.”

11/20/2025

The wildcat, the only member of the cat family native to Britain that’s still found there, is critically endangered in the United Kingdom. Due to habitat loss and persecution from humans, their range had been whittled down to a small sliver of Scotland. Last year, 19 wildcats were released in the area of Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands as part of a restoration effort, and it appears wild-born kittens have followed...

11/20/2025

In October 1775, poet Phillis Wheatley, a formerly enslaved woman who began writing poetry at 13, sent George Washington a poem in his honor. His grateful reply and invitation to meet reflected the ideals and contradictions of a revolution fighting for freedom.

Discover more about this pivotal history in the new film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt, which examines how America’s founding revolutionized the world and inspired democratic movements worldwide. You can now watch "The American Revolution" on PBS.

Learn more about Phillis Wheatley: https://bit.ly/49L4tBa

(Image Credit)
Phillis Wheatley, Unidentified artist, after Scipio Moorhead, 1773, Engraving on paper, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

11/20/2025

On the set of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, there was one scene where Captain Nathan Brittles is given a gold watch upon his retirement.

What the audience never knew is that the watch wasn’t a prop at all.

It was real.

When John Wayne opened the case on camera, he wasn’t reading lines—he was looking at an inscription the cast and crew had secretly arranged:

“To Duke – Our Captain, On and Off Screen.”

For a moment, the man who embodied the toughest cowboys in cinema just stood there, speechless.

Ford didn’t yell “Cut.” He let the camera roll as Wayne swallowed hard, blinked a few times, and slipped the watch into his pocket with a quiet nod.

That shot stayed in the film.
That watch stayed with Wayne for the rest of his life.

And every time he looked at it, he was reminded that the real measure of a man wasn’t how many gunfights he won—
…it was the loyalty he earned when the cameras stopped rolling.

11/20/2025

A map of the early Revolutionary frontier theater shows the three main forts maintained by Virginia to protect settlers from Indians attacking from across the Ohio River. More forts were built by the settlers . The Revolution was a two-front war, but the west is often overlooked, in part because Virginia fought there mostly alone.
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Learn more at Virginia1776.com
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11/20/2025

Over 228 years old! That's more than some countries