A nuke goes off and now there's 1546 dead sharks floating belly-up in the ocean :p
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A nuke goes off and now there's 1546 dead sharks floating belly-up in the ocean :p
1547 -- While Aimus and Jay were drinking themselves under the table, 1539 came and went. Still, I've got to tell you about 1539.
You see, in 1539, the saga of the MacDonalds and the struggle over the title of Lord of the Isles finally came to a head. Gorm MacDonald was still the imprisoned chief of Clan Donald. Rumor had it though that a conspiracy of lesser Lairds and tenants of the MacDonald territory were going to try to help Gorm escape. His son, Grumach, wanted to become The Donald (the name the MacDonalds used to denote the Clan chief.) Realizing that if his father returned, that his chances would fade considerably, he decided to take matters into his own hands with a pre-emptive strike.
Declaring himself to be "Lord of the Isles" (without a charter or being granted the title from King James V), he sailed to the northern shores of the Isle of Skye and demanded allegiance from the freetown of Trotternish. When they refused, he sacked the town and drove the inhabitants away. He then sailed to the western, seaward shores of the Isle of Skye and demanded that the MacLeods of Dunvegan pledge to him. They pledged under duress and were required to supply fifty sailing galleys to his army. (It should be noted, however, that although the sailing galleys were small, about 12 men each, 600 men from a single town seems unlikely, so the number of galleys was probably significantly less than 50.)
His next objective was to reclaim Highland lands on the mainland of Scotland lost to the MacKenzies when the title "Earl of Ross" and the shire of Ross-dom was stripped from John MacDonald II in 1468. Kenneth MacKenzie had a "summer home" on the sea lock of Lochalsh, near Dornie, in the form of a castle called Eilean Donan (meaning "Isle of Donan" or possibly "Isle of Anne"). Being late fall, with threat of winter snows, the castle was nearly unoccupied. Only the castle keep was still there.
On the day that Grumach's ships approached Eilean Donan, MacKinzie's Captain of the Guard and personal bodyguard, Duncan Macrae, had returned to Dornie. Seeing the approaching galleys, he raced them to castle Eilean Donan, just beating them there. His arrival doubled the defensive strength within the castle. The galleys, unable to approach close enough for a water-based seige, disgorged their warriors who attempted to approach the castle over the narrow bridge that linked island to mainland.
The MacDonald soldiers were able to approach only in small numbers of twos and threes because of the narrow bridge, so the two men inside the castle were able to successfully hold off the entire MacDonald army. Eventually though, they ran out of arrows and had to resort to dislodging rocks from the walls of the castle and throwing them down onto the heads of the attackers below. It was during this phase of the attack that the Castle Keep was killed, leaving Duncan Macrae the sole occupant of the castle.
Still, Grumach's casualties had been heavy and he was no closer to gaining access than he had been at the beginning of the day. In frustration, he tried one last tactic. He had the mast of his galley struck and lashed to the brow of the ship. He was able to thus advance toward the castle far enough that the mast made contact with the wall of the castle. He began to scuttle up the angled mast, intending to breech the wall and capture the castle.
Duncan, however, had saved back one arrow. This arrow had a barbed tip. Duncan shot his last arrow at Grumach, but the shot went wide. Instead of striking Grumach a lethal blow, the arrow struck him in the ankle. Grumach, knowing that Duncan was now defenseless, laughed and pulled the arrow out of his leg. The barbs on the arrowhead severed an artery and within minutes, Grumach bled to death. Seeing their Lord fall, the MacDonald men withdrew and the MacLeod men deserted.
This single-handed defeat was the final nail in the coffin of the MacDonald dreams of reviving the Lord of the Isles status. It also was the act that eventually led to castle Eilean Donan being transferred from the MacKenzies to the Macraes, although the honor was not bestowed on Duncan himself. Castle Eilean Donan remains to this day in the possession of the Macraes and, although destroyed two hundred years later during the 1745 Jacobite uprising, was rebuilt in 1912 and stands today as one of the few Scottish castles still occupied and in use. It can be rented for vacations or weddings and has been featured in several movies including Mel Gibson's Braveheart.
1548
Hello......
1548 (actually 1549)
And that's why you don't pull arrows.
~~~1549~~~
Hmm, somehow we got off track so also
......1550
1551 came and went, too...
1552
sorry, I usually always check the numbers on the posts, but I guess I didn't
1554
hey pen :D
!!1!5!5!5!!
1556- Ignatius de Loyola died
1557
Robert Recorde's The Whetstone of Witte introduces an elongated version of the equal sign, =, into mathematics (asking what could be more equal than a pair of parallel lines); it also introduces the + and - signs for addition and subtraction into English.
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1559
Morse code, eh?
1560 - It's the age of pirates! :D