August 30 in Scottish History

ON this day in 1991 Dundee runner, Liz McColgan, won the World 10,000 metres final by more than 20 secs. This was perhaps the crowning moment of a glittering athletics career for McColgan, which also brought her two Olympic silver medals. A former jute mill worker from a deprived housing estate in the city, McColgan rose from obscurity to become the leading Scottish athlete of her day, triumphing on home soil by winning gold at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.

On 30 August 1856 Admiral Sir John Ross, the Scottish Polar explorer, died. Ross is known as the man who discovered the North Magnetic Pole. Born in Wigtownshire, Ross served in the Royal Navy from the age of nine and fought during the Napoleonic wars. Ross led three expeditions in search of the North-West passage.

Today in 1820 James Wilson, the Strathaven Radical, was hanged and beheaded on Glasgow Green for his part in the 1820 Radical War. A crowd of 20,000 witnessed the execution, most sympathetic to Wilson. Wilson remarked on the crowd to the hangman Thomas Moore - "Did ye evir see sic a crowd, Tammas?"

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