Scotland Facts

The U.S. has more bagpipe bands than Scotland does.

In Scotland it is illegal to be a drunk in possession of a cow.

Scotland has the highest percentage of redheads in the world, with around 13% of the population sporting fiery locks.

The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers founded in 1744, is the world's oldest golf club!

Angus Barbieri walked into a Dundee hospital at 27 weighing 456 pounds and asked doctors to help him stop eating until he was thin. They expected a few days. He lasted 382 days on nothing but tea, coffee, water, and vitamins, living entirely off body fat. He dropped to 180 pounds and kept the weight off for the rest of his life. The longest medically supervised fast in history.

The 'Bicycle Tree', found near Brig o' Turk in Scotland, has consumed an entire bike that now hangs out of its bark.

For decades, Scotland was the only country where Coca-Cola wasn't the best-selling soft drink. The local favorite Irn-Bru held the top spot until around 2012, when Coca-Cola finally overtook it—though Irn-Bru remains a beloved national icon.

Workers at a Scottish nuclear facility were decommissioning a plutonium plant, but the expensive industrial cleaners were not working. Then one worker remembered a Cillit Bang TV ad for a £1.99 bathroom cleaner. They tried it. It worked so well that other UK nuclear sites called to ask about it.

Stonehenge's central slab is the Altar Stone - a 6-tonne sandstone block. Scientists believed for a century it came from Wales. A study in Nature matched its mineral fingerprint to northeast Scotland, over 750 km away. That is the longest recorded stone haul of the Neolithic era. How Neolithic people moved it there remains unsolved - possibly by sea.

Bamse was a St Bernard in the Royal Norwegian Navy during World War II. He wore a steel helmet at the gun tower in battle and once pushed an attacker into the sea to save an officer. The crew gave him his own bus pass, and he rode Scotland's buses alone to round up sailors from the pubs before curfew. Bamse died in 1944. In 2006, he won the PDSA Gold Medal, the only WWII animal so honored.