March 29 in Scottish History

On 29 March 2002, Longannet, Scotland's last deep coal mine, closed, ending centuries of mining tradition. The Fife mine was put into liquidation after being flooded on the 23rd, when a dam separating old workings from new seams under the river Forth collapsed. The water poured into the five-mile mineshafts, 600m (1,870ft) below ground, in less than ten minutes. After examination by engineers, it was decided that it would be too expensive to rescue the pit, even though there was an estimated 40 million tons of coal still to be extracted. 500 men were expected to lose their jobs as a result of the closure.

On 29 March 1822, Ewan MacLachlan, the noted Gaelic poet and scholar, died. Born in Lochaber in 1775, MacLachlan became the librarian at King's College, Aberdeen, and achieved renown as the translator of Homer into Gaelic.

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