And today's history lesson is for our resident Anglophiles and those of Scottish ancestry:
On this day in history, July 3, 1996, the Stone of Scone was returned to Scotland.
The Stone of Scone weighs 336 pounds, a Latin cross its decoration, and was associated with the crowning of Scottish kings and was encased in the coronation chair. When Edward I of England invaded Scotland in 1296, the stone was taken, and eventually incased in a coronation chair in Westminster Abbey, symbolic that English kings also ruled Scotland.
According to one Celtic legend the stone was once the pillow upon which the patriarch Jacob rested at Bethel when he beheld the visions of angels. From the Holy Land it purportedly traveled to Egypt, Sicily, and Spain and reached Ireland about 700 bc to be set upon the hills of Tara, where the ancient kings of Ireland were crowned. Thence it was taken by the Celtic Scots who invaded and occupied Scotland. About ad 840 it was taken by Kenneth MacAlpin to the village of Scone.
Attached to the stone in ancient times was allegedly a piece of metal with a prophecy that Sir Walter Scott translated as
Unless the fates be faulty grown
And prophet’s voice be vain
Where’er is found this sacred stone
The Scottish race shall reign.
