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WonderHistory fact

Scotland's official national animal is the unicorn, a creature that has appeared on Scotland's royal coat of arms since at least the 1400s.

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In medieval European legend the unicorn stood for purity, freedom and a strength no one could tame. Scottish kings adopted it in their heraldry, the system of symbols used on shields and coats of arms, and by the 1400s a pair of unicorns held up the royal arms of Scotland. They are usually shown with a gold chain around them; a common explanation is that only a king was strong enough to hold such a creature. When James VI of Scotland also became king of England in 1603, the two royal arms were combined, with England's lion on one side and Scotland's unicorn on the other. They still face each other on the royal arms of the United Kingdom today.

Türkçe oku
İskoçya'nın resmî ulusal hayvanı tek boynuzlu attır. Bu efsanevi yaratık en az 1400'lerden beri İskoç kraliyet armasında yer alır.

Ortaçağ Avrupa efsanelerinde tek boynuzlu at saflığın, özgürlüğün ve kimsenin evcilleştiremeyeceği bir gücün simgesiydi. İskoç kralları onu armalarına, yani kalkanlarda ve mühürlerde kullanılan simgeler düzenine aldı; 1400'lerde İskoç kraliyet armasını iki yanından tutan figürler iki tek boynuzlu attı. Genellikle üzerlerinde altın bir zincirle gösterilirler; yaygın bir yoruma göre böyle bir yaratığı ancak bir kral zapt edebilirdi. İskoçya Kralı VI. James 1603'te İngiltere tahtına da çıkınca iki kraliyet arması birleştirildi: Bir yana İngiltere'nin aslanı, öbür yana İskoçya'nın tek boynuzlu atı yerleşti. İkisi Birleşik Krallık kraliyet armasında bugün de karşı karşıya durur.

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On the mainland, the last woolly mammoths died out around 10,000 years ago, as the Ice Age ended and the cold grasslands they lived on shrank. Two island populations held on much longer: one on St Paul Island in Alaska until about 5,600 years ago, and one on Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago, around 2000 BC. Rising seas had cut Wrangel off from Siberia, leaving some 300 to 1,000 animals alone there for thousands of years. These dates come from radiocarbon dating of bones and tusks, which measures how much of a slowly decaying form of carbon is left in them. Genetic studies show that the population was inbred but stayed stable for thousands of years, so its end seems to have come suddenly. What finally killed the last mammoths is still unknown.

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Oxford has no founding date. There is evidence of teaching there in some form by 1096, and it grew quickly after 1167, when Henry II barred English students from the University of Paris. In 1209, after clashes with the townspeople, some scholars left for Cambridge and started the university there. The popular claim that Oxford is older than the Aztecs usually uses 1325, the year the Mexica people founded Tenochtitlan on an island in Lake Texcoco, where Mexico City stands today. But the Mexica became an imperial power only in 1428, when, together with Texcoco and Tlacopan, they defeated Azcapotzalco, the city that had dominated the valley. The empire lasted less than a century: Hernán Cortés and his Indigenous allies took Tenochtitlan in 1521.

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