Auld Reekie: A Quiz About Edinburgh

Answer: Abraham Lincoln

The statue of Lincoln, which many consider to be the finest ever sculpted of him, is atop a memorial to a group of Scottish soldiers who died in the American Civil War. It is inscribed with a quotation from Lincoln himself: "To preserve the jewel of liberty in the framework of freedom."

Answer: The Mound is all of these things

The Mound is an artificial hill in the heart of Edinburgh, built in the 1770s out of earth excavated from the foundations of the New Town and refuse collected from the Old, over 1.5 million cartloads in all. It provides a direct, if steep, connection between Princes Street and the Royal Mile.

At the top stands the headquarters of the Bank of Scotland, the second oldest surviving bank in the United Kingdom (one year younger than the Bank of England), and the first bank in Europe to print its own banknotes.

Answer: The theft of newly-buried corpses for sale to anatomy teachers

In the early 19th century Edinburgh University was one of the world's most renowned centres of medical science. The school of anatomy, and the many private teachers who practised in the city, created a huge demand for cadavers for dissection. This was at a time when the only authorized supply, the bodies of executed criminals, was being greatly reduced by legal reforms.

The towers were erected in the graveyards to keep a watch for the so-called "resurrectionists" who dug up recently buried bodies to sell them to anatomists.

The infamous Burke and Hare took things a step further by not waiting for people to be buried: they murdered at least 17 victims in order to sell their bodies.

Answer: All of these were founded by Scots

William Smith, the first Provost of what became the University of Pennsylvania, was born in Aberdeen in 1727 and educated at the University there, before being invited by Benjamin Franklin to teach in Philadelphia.
The Rev. James Blair, born in Banff in 1656 and educated at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, was the founder and first President of the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
Most famously, John Witherspoon, an Edinburgh graduate born in East Lothian, became the first President of the College of New Jersey, later Princeton University.

Answer: Golf

Nobody knows exactly when golf was first played at Bruntsfield, but an ordinance PROHIBITING the playing of the game there was issued in 1457. It was not until 1744 that the oldest known golf club, the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, was formed, and the club known as the Royal and Ancient in St. Andrews, which now controls the game of golf worldwide (except for the USA and Mexico), was not heard of until 1754.

Answer: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Conan Doyle was a student in Edinburgh in the 1870s. He started writing the Sherlock Holmes stories a few years later to while away the time waiting for patients at his not very successful medical practice in Southsea, Hampshire.
G.K. Chesterton, the creator of Father Brown, was educated at University College, London.
Agatha Christie, responsible for both Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, received no formal education.
Georges Simenon, the creator of Maigret, was born in Liege, Belgium in 1903. His education was cut short by the start of World War I.

Answer: George Heriot and James Watt

Heriot Watt University is named for George Heriot, the 16th Century financier, and the 18th century inventor and father of the steam engine James Watt.
John Napier, the inventor of logarithms, and Queen Margaret, the St. Margaret who was the wife of King Malcolm III, each have "new" universities named for them in Edinburgh.
Stewart's Melville is an Edinburgh secondary school, while the Astley Ainslie is a well-known city hospital.

Answer: Sir Walter Scott

Following the Battle of Culloden in 1746, Highland culture was ruthlessly suppressed with both tartan and the bagpipes being banned as incentives to rebellion. Seventy-five years on, Scott took the opportunity of the King's visit to stage-manage an almost totally spurious revival of a "Highland Tradition" of clan chieftaincy and flamboyant dress which had never really existed. To follow the new fashion, lowlanders embarked on a desperate search for highland antecedents, however remote, and what had been the despised garb of Gaelic-speaking cattle-thieves became the accepted national dress of Scotland for good and all time.

Answer: Ebenezer Scroggie

Scroggie was an Edinburgh corn merchant or "meal man" whose gravestone Dickens saw on a visit to Edinburgh. It is said he misread the inscription as "mean man" and so the idea of the unrepentant miser was born.

Answer: He published all of them

Despite numerous ups and downs (his firm went spectacularly bankrupt in 1826)the successor to Constable's company is still in business. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, to which he purchased the copyright in 1812, remains one of the world's greatest works of reference, although under different management.

The Edinburgh Review was for well over 100 years one of the most influential literary magazines in the English-speaking world. Scott's famous novels, including Ivanhoe and Heart of Midlothian, are classic works which are still hugely popular the world over.