#april-7 — Public Fediverse posts

It's world 🌍 #JackieChan Day 🍿🍬🎈🥂🍾🎉🥧🍰🍥🍡🍭🍦

Happy 72nd #birthday To #jackiechan 🍿🍬🎈🎀🎊 #movieactor 🎥
A𝒈𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒋𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒂 𝒏𝒖𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓🍷🍿🍬🎈🎉 #Celebrities
🥧 Grow stronger and wax stronger
#Bahdlexbirthday #April7 #April7th #congrate #bahdlexempire #HBD

Orange tulips.

#BloomScrolling #tulips #flowers #FlowersOfMastodon #SpringFlowers #April7 #OrangeFlowers #florespondence #Spring

More tulips blooming.

#BloomScrolling #tulips #daffodils #flowers #FlowerGarden #RedFlowers #PinkFlowers #YellowFlowers #OrangeFlowers #SpringFlowers #florespondence #FlowersOfMastodon #April7

The concrete jungle of violets.

#BloomScrolling #SpringFlowers #violets #ViolaOdorata #FlowersOfMastodon #April7 #flowers #PurpleFlowers

📜#Histoire d'un jour - 7 avril 1994 : un silence coupable et des machettes levées https://www.election-politique.com/election.php?ref=1343

#Anniversaire #7Avril #April7 #7April #7deAbril #7Aprile #4月7日 #7أبريل #Rwanda #génocide #politique #politics

Meta Expands Community Notes Across US Platforms by April 7

#April7 #CommunityNotes #Meta #socialmedia #unitedstates
https://blazetrends.com/meta-expands-community-notes-across-us-platforms-by-april-7/?fsp_sid=7712

On this date in 1996, a wedding took place at Lopburi Zoo, Bangkok. The bride and groom were Mike and Susu, a pair of Orangutans.

10 weird and wonderful things which happened on 7 April:

#OTD #OnThisDate #OnThisDay #ThisDayInHistory #April7 #7April

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalSucks
Sh*t That Comes Out Today – April 7, 2023
New releases for April 7 including Scowl, Linkin Park, Tribulation, Thy Art is Murder and more. The post Sh*t That Comes Out Today – April 7, 2023 appeared first on MetalSucks.

https://www.metalsucks.net/2023/04/07/sht-that-comes-out-today-april-7-2023/

#MetalMondays
#ShtThatComesOutToday
#April7
#2023
#HeavyMetal
#JoeyRyan
#Aqualung
#Pummeler
#Shocker
#LegacyOfTheWasteland
#Kamikabe
#TodaysReleases
#MusicNews

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalInjection
THE WEEKLY INJECTION: New Releases From POWERWOLF, SCOWL & More Out Today 4/7
Plus releases from Covet, Paul Gilbert, Sunrot, Tribulatiom, and Angel Vivaldi.

https://metalinjection.net/upcoming-releases/heavy-new-releases/the-weekly-injection-new-releases-from-powerwolf-scowl-more-out-today-4-7

#MetalMusic #Powerwolf #Scowl #HeavyNewReleases #HeavyRock #TheWeeklyInjection #AlbumRelease #April7

Blitz! The thread about WW2 air raids in Edinburgh and Leith

An air raid on Leith on the night of Monday April 7th 1941 saw extensive property damage caused in North Leith. But it wasn’t just bricks and mortar that suffered: three people were killed and 118 injured in the raid which makes it the 10th most deadly such event (by total casualties) in Scotland during the war.

Note, there was deliberately limited and non-specific press reporting of the details and casualties of air raids during the war itself. Some such reporting only took place, retrospectively, after the war but understandably details were occasionally incorrect or overlooked. For accuracy and out of respect I have endeavoured to cross-reference everything below that refers to individuals with the official civilian war death records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and Scotland’s People.

One of those who lost their lives in the raid that night was 17 year old Anstruther (Ernie) Smith, a delivery boy from 15 Graham Street who also worked as a messenger for the Leith ARP (Air Raid Precautions – civil defence). On hearing the sirens he had assisted his elderly neighbours to a shelter before reporting for duty at Leith’s Town hall a few streets away where Ferry Road meets Great Junction and North Junction Streets. It was here that he lost his life when a bomb landed nearby and exploded. He was fondly remembered in his community as someone who freely helped the elderly; checking in on them on his way to work each morning to light their fires and make them a cup of tea, and running errands for them. The Anstruther Pensioner’s Club was formed after the war in his memory, it was held in the very room in the Town Hall where we died and it attracted 300 members and a waiting list of 200.

Also killed by the same bomb that claimed Ernie was 85 year-old Jane Notman Young, who died in her house by the Town Hall at 21 North Junction Street. Lastly a 19 year-old apprentice draughtsman and Home Guard volunteer, Kenneth James Anderson, died in hospital the following morning after his house at 5 Largo Place was badly damaged in the blast. This block would later have to be demolished.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/15989027951/

Mercifully the death-to-injury ratio was substantially lower than other comparable attacks on Scottish cities; Leith had been hit by two bombs known as Luftmines – large weapons that were dropped on a parachute and intended for use against dock areas to attack shipping. These as it turned out were not very effective against other targets such as buildings, despite their size. Never the less, three hundred people in North Leith were rendered homeless due to the damage caused to housing in the neighbourhood. £1,500 was allocated to Leith from the National Air Raid Distress Fund, which provided emergency clothing, bedding and canteens to raid victims.

The bombs that hit Leith damaged the three principal public buildings of the burgh; its Town Hall (which included its main public auditorium), its Library – both of which were hardly 10 years old – and the large David Kilpatrick (“DK“) School adjacent. As well as the tenement houses, the Norwegian Seaman’s Lutheran Church, North Leith Parish Church and a railway embankment and signal box of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) all suffered varying degrees of damage. The gallery below shows some of these:

The main lending room of the library was not fully repaired until 1956 although the reference room had been re-purposed to serve as such in the meantime. The Town Hall and its auditorium had to wait until 1961, a full 20 years after the bombs had fallen. The city’s apparent neglect in restoring the public buildings of Leith after the war caused much local consternation at the time. This damaged caused to the outbuildings of the DK school, which were in use as a nursery school, became known locally as the Bombies and was apparently where pupils would gather to sort out their differences with fists. It would not be replaced until much later and this in turn was demolished, along with the rest of the school, in the 1980s.

Although Leith was marked as a bombing target on German maps, the intended target of this raid had actually been Clydebank almost 50 miles to the west, where 20 souls lost their lives and 313 were injured that same night. This attack was a follow up to the Clydebank Blitz of March 1941 but the raiders had become scattered and twelve other targets across Scotland, including Leith, were hit that night with a total of 49 killed and 456 injured. Most of the deaths night were in Gretna in Dumfriesshire where a lone aircraft jettisoned its bombs and hit a Masonic Lodge, killing 22 and wounding 18. Other bombs were dropped as widely as Bankfoot and Stanley in Perthshire, Loch Nevis in Knoydart, Fife and Arbroath in the east of the country and Greenlaw to the south in the Borders; a huge margin of error. Closer to Leith were the mainline railway leading to the Forth Bridge near Turnhouse and Braehead House in Cramond with thirty four incendiary bombs between these points. These were 1kg aluminium tubes filled with a compound called Thermite which burned at around 2,500°C and were intended to set fire to wooden structures and the timber flooring and roof structures of buildings. These were a far cry from the ineffective rope and tar incendiaries dropped on Edinburgh and Leith by a German Zepellin in 1916.

Although this raid caused the greatest damage to property in Leith during the war, it was not the worst in terms of the loss of life. The previous summer, on the evening of July 18th 1940 at 7:45PM, seven people were killed on George Street in North Leith (now known as North Fort Street). At 8 George Street David Lennie Duff (a 33 year-old basket maker) and his sister Lily Duff (a 23 year-old biscuit packer); Catherine Helliwell (a 61 year-old housewife) and her son-in-law Robert Thomson (a 25 year-old baker); Catherine Fallon Baird (74); and Catherine Redpath (41) who had been visiting the address from her home at 20 Gorgie Road were killed. Over the street at number 13, 15 year-old Jane (Jean) Bauld Rutherford from number 17 was killed when the bomb shelter she was in was hit. The fatal damage had been caused by bombs intended for the Victoria Dock, one of which hit the foot of Portland Place where a nearby tramcar was fortunate to miss getting a direct hit that would surely have resulted in more fatalities.

Number 8 George Street, where six people had lost their lives, had to be demolished along with its neighbour at number 10 and was not rebuilt until 1959. The rest of the tenements of George Street – apart from the northern corner blocks – were later levelled by the city planners as part of the Fort Area Comprehensive Redevelopment not long afterwards.

Four days later, on July 22nd, a raid on Leith Docks killed Robert Hume of 45 Glover Street (aged 33), a fireman with the Auxiliary Fire Service at the Albert Dock. Also on this night Mary Fulton Riach (aged 65) of 23 Woodbine Terrace and Catherine Leishman (aged 68) of 4 Meadowbank Crescent both died from heart failure during the raid, the official cause of death being put down to “war operations“. Two months later, on September 29th, a single stray bomb fell on the block of number 21 – 27 Crewe Place in East Pilton killing the young McArthur children; brother and sister Morag Elizabeth (aged 5) and Ronald Egbert (aged 7) from number 27. Their neighbour Charles Fortune Wilson (aged 69) of number 25 would die the next day in hospital. The landlords and builders of this housing scheme, Mactaggart and Mickel, rehoused the now-homeless survivors and had rebuilt the house at their own expense within 6 weeks. A wartime shortage of timber meant it was given a flat roof, the only such house on the street and the only clue to its sad history.

Another single, stray bomb dropped that evening hit a bonded whisky warehouse of the Caledonian Distillery on Duff Street in Dalry. The distillery was home to over a million gallons of highly-flammable spirit and an immense fire erupted, so ferocious that the reflection on the clouds in the night sky was apparently visible to German aircrew flying over Middlesborough, 150 miles (240km) away to the south. The bond was totally destroyed, as was one adjoining tenement of fourteen flats at 28 Springwell Place.

A week later around 745PM on October 7th, five small bombs were dropped in the district of Marchmont, landing at 29 Roseneath Terrace, 20 Meadow Place, 16 Roseneath Place, 13 Marchmont Crescent and 21 Marchmont Road. Eleven people were injured by flying glass and splinters. Three weeks later on the morning of October 26th, Margaret Ridley Stuart (aged 72) died at her flat at 45 Tolbooth Wynd in Leith from a heart attack brought on by another air raid leaving her husband Thomas, a retired dock labourer, a widower.

The following month the animal population of Edinburgh Zoo was reduced slightly when, on November 4th, two stray bombs hit the park killing six budgerigars and a wild rabbit (as reported by Zoo Director T. H. Gillespie to The Scotsman, Friday 20 December 1940). The craters were left unfilled and became a visitor attraction. A crater caused by a bomb dropped on the lawn of Holyrood Park was used by enterprising locals to raise money for a Spitfire Fund by charging for access to view it.

The month after the raid on North Leith which had killed Ernie, on the night of 6th May 1941, five lives were lost in the suburban bungalows of Duddingston on the outskirts of the city. One large bomb, three smaller ones and 100 incendiaries fell on Niddrie Road (now called Duddingston Park South), Milton Crescent and the Jewel Cottages at around half past midnight. Leonard Arthur Wilde (aged 39), an Air Raid Warden, was killed in his home at number 27 Milton Crescent along with his neighbours Joseph Watson (aged 40) of the Home Guard and William Dineley (aged 37). Lilias Tait Waterston (aged 69) was killed in her house at 26 Niddrie Road and her neighbour Barbara Thomson (87) was killed at number 30.

The last bombs of the war which caused fatalities in Edinburgh fell on Loaning Road in Craigentinny on the night of August 6th 1942, demolishing the Corporation tenement at number 35. Two people were killed; Elizabeth Veitch (aged 13) at number 35 and Robert Wright (aged 66), the janitor of Craigentinny Community Centre next door. A replacement tenement was built here post-war.

You can see in the first picture where the bomb has left a crater (green arrow), upended an “Anderson” shelter (blue) and the entrance to another shelter (orange). Note the white painted poles, so you don’t run into them in the dark

Edinburgh and Leith were mercifully spared most of the horrors of aerial bombing meted out to other cities during WW2. Altogether there were 21 civilian deaths and about 210 injuries caused directly by aerial bombing. At least 5 further deaths were recorded as being due to “war operations” when people had heart attacks brought about by the shock and stress of experiencing an air raid.

If this thread has proved interesting you may be interested in a thread on the first aerial raids and shooting down of German aircraft over the UK in WW2 which took place over the Firth of Forth in view of Edinburgh and Leith or a thread detailing some of the anti-aircraft defences of the city during the conflict.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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The thread about Marionville; the house that thread built and home to the unfortunate “Fortunate Duellist”

This thread was originally written and published in November 2019. It has been lightly edited and corrected as applicable for this post.

There’s an old Georgian villa in the east of Edinburgh called Marionville. It lends its name to the district, a few streets and a fire station. It’s your typical regular, 3-storey, 5-bay, 6-over-6 window, sandstone job and although it is quite a rarity in a largely 20th century part of town, at first glance it is otherwise unremarkable for Edinburgh.

Unremarkable that is until you find out a little bit about the place’s history! It was built some time between the 1760s and 1780s by the Misses Ramsay of Old Lyon Close, milliners renowned in the burgh for their ribboned hats. When built it was called Viewfrith (as in a house where one could view the Frith, or Firth of Forth. On account of its occupants trade, it was scornfully nicknamed the Lappet Ha‘, lappet referring to the woven lacework that was common in Georgian women’s hats. Ha’ for ball; the house that lappet built. The misses Ramsay saw out their days in their fine house and its gardens, and in October 1780 it was noted as being for sale:

About 1786 it passed to one James Macrae of Holmains Esq. who liked to be known as Captain Macrae on account of his service in the 6th Dragoon Guards (Irish Carabiniers), a Hanoverian cavalry regiment. By accounts he was both a sophisticated, cultured charmer and an arrogant, pompous “Goth“. It was Macrae who renamed the house, calling it for his wife, Maria Cecile le Maistre.

Captain Macrae had a quick temper and an overinflated sense of his own status. He was nicknamed the “fortunate duellist” on account of his propensity to call for satisfaction and on not being dead as a result. He practised by firing at a barber’s block kept specially for the purpose, or so John Kay caricatured him.

The Macraes soon built up a reputation as a home of the “gayest private theatricals, perhaps in Britain“. Being wealthy and aspirational with tastes “gay and fashionable” they had a 150-seat private theatre built, complete with stage, curtain and scenery in the house where the couple themselves took the starring roles. The great and the good of Edinburgh were invited and the shows were a hot ticket in town, being well reviewed in the papers. The Scots Magazine and Caledonian Mercury were full of gushing praise for them.

Maria Macrae was the daughter of the Swedish ambassador’s wife and had spent time in Paris with her cousins. It was there she got a taste for the private theatricals of the time and it was she who was chiefly responsible for reproducing them at Marionville. The Macrae’s inner circle was a centre of Georgian high fashion in Edinburgh, the women wore head-dresses so tall that they had to “sit on the carriage floor” and the men wore “bright coats with tails to their heels” and “wigs with great side curls“. The innermost of their circle were the Ramsays (no relation to the Misses), Sir George Ramsay of Bamff, 6th Baronet and his wife, Eleanor Fraser. They were “warmly attached and intimate” with the Macraes.

So all was good. Everyone was happy and Marionville was the place to be seen around town. Macrae was highly regarded in the right circles, but his pomposity and temper would be his unravelling. An example of this was when a messenger of the law tried to arrest his cousin, the Reverend John Cunningham, Earl Glencairn, at a private party in Drumsheugh House. Macrae was outraged that a common man would insult a gentleman, and threw the messenger over the stairwell. When it later came to light that Cunningham was a debtor who had refused all chance to settle his obligations and that the messenger had been gravely injured, Macrae made an apology and paid compensation of 300 guineas to settle the matter.

And then we come to the fateful night of April 7th 1790. Captain Macrae had been out at the Theatre Royal, which stood on Shakespeare Square, opposite the General Register Office and where the General Post Office would later be built. Being a gentleman, he was helping a lady to get a chair to convey her home (this meant a sedan chair; at this time were still the principal form of public transport of choice for the moneyed classes around town). He had secured the lady her chair when a liveried footman appeared on the scene and seized one of the poles of the chair to reserve it for his mistress. The outraged Macrae rapped the impertinent servant’s knuckles with his cane.

The footman, not to be cowed, denounced Macrae as a scoundrel and punched him in the chest. Macrae responded by striking him across the head with his cane. An almighty fracas ensued, sucking in passers-by on both sides. Somehow the conflict was defused and the lady was spirited to safety in another chair. And there it might have ended until Macrae was made aware that the footman in question was an employee of his dear friend, Sir George Ramsay.

And so, the following day Macrae sought out Ramsay at his place of business. His friend informed him that the servant in question was recently engaged by his wife and he felt that he had no hand in the matter. Macrae insisted that he would therefore apologise to the lady at once. Hurrying to the Ramsay’s house on St. Andrew Square, he found her sitting for an up and coming your artist, one Henry Raeburn. Theatrically going down on one knee, Macrae begged forgiveness for having chastised her servant. And there it would have ended. But…

A few days later at Marionville, an anonymous letter arrived stating that Macrae had meddled with the “Knights of the Shoulder Knot” (the name given to footmen for their elaborate uniforms) and they would have their revenge for the insult to their brother. The footman in question, James Merry, took the matter further by making it known he would take legal proceedings against his assailant for the injuries he had suffered. Piqued, Macrae wrote to Ramsay and demanded that the man be put in his place and discharged. For whatever reason, Ramsay declined to satisfy his friend and their relationship quickly soured as the two engaged in a protracted series of increasingly intemperate letters. This culminated in Macrae having his messenger inform Ramsay that he was not a gentleman, but a scoundrel!

That was that! Macrae had overstepped the mark for sure, Ramsay was a proper gentleman, with a title, not someone you could go around insulting. The intermediary, one Captain Amory, arranged a meeting of both parties in Bayle’s Tavern at which “rough epithets were exchanged“. The outcome was inevitable and satisfaction was demanded by Macrae. But he let it be known that he considered Ramsay the challenger, for refusing to deal with his servant.

The time and place was set for the shore outside of Musselburgh at noon the next day. What better place to settle your differences than in the cool sea breeze of the Honest Toun? And so it was that the next day the two gentlemen, each with another in tow as second, met at Wards Inn off of the Musselburgh Links. A surgeon, Benjamin Bell, was sensibly arranged for.

A parlay took place to see if things could be settled amicably, without either side losing face. Macrae demanded that if Ramsay dismiss his servant he would apologise profusely for all that had followed and consider it closed. Ramsay demanded an apology first, before any further progress could be made. Both sides were intransigent. The seconds which each side had brought as counsel declined further compromise and the course of action was now set. Each man took a pistol from a pair and made his way to the allotted spot on the Links. Each then walked 14 paces away from the other and the duel commenced. Ramsay shot first and nicked the collar of his late friend, grazing the neck. Macrae did not miss and Ramsay was mortally wounded. Macrae would later claim that he had planned to shoot high and miss on purpose, but was so outraged that Ramsay had not deliberately missed and had drawn blood that he decided to settle the matter once and for all by not missing. For a sure shot like Macrae, the outcome was inevitable.

The deed done, Macrae was suddenly remorseful and had to be convinced to leave his dying friends’ side by Ramsay’s second, Sir William Maxwell. Edinburgh society was outraged and it was Macrae, the lower status gentleman that they squarely blamed for this calamity. Being a proper class scandal, the detail was all printed at the time (then, as now, controversy was good for sales) and Macrae was immortalised as “The Fortunate Duellist” by Edinburgh caricaturist John Kay. By trade Kay was a barber, so the story of the practice target may have appealed to him as much as the chance to satirise events.

Facing a potential murder charge, Macrae abandoned Marionville and his family and fled to Paris accompanied by his second, Captain Amory. They took up lodgings in the Hôtel de la Dauphine. A summons soon arrived from Edinburgh to return and face the law. Ignoring it, both were declared outlaws and consigned themselves to live out their days in exile. To add insult to Macrae’s injury, 2 years later the Sheriffs awarded damages and compensation to the footman for his original injuries, which were paid from Macrae’s estate in his absence. Macrae stayed in Paris until the coming of the French revolution compelled his to flee further, this time to Altona in Italy. He had hoped that the passage of time would allow him to return home to Marionville, but society and the law were resolved against it.

And so it was that the gayest house in town fell into “an air of depression and melancholy such as could barely fail to strike the most unobservant passenger“. It was advertised as being to let in 1793 and the following year it was for sale. Macrae was soon forgotten by the chattering classes of Edinburgh. That is until 1814, when publisher Robert Chambers relates that “a gentleman of my acquaintance was surprised to meet him one day in a Parisian coffee house“. “The wreck or ghost of the handsome, sprightly man he had once been.” “The comfort of his home, his country and his friends, the use of his talents to all these, had been lost, and himself obliged to lead the life of a condemned Cain, all through the one fault of a fiery temper“.

Captain Macrae, late of Marionville, died alone in Paris on the 16th January 1820, 30 years an exile from his home, wife and 2 children. “Captain Macrae was a strange character. To those of his own class a tyrant and bully. To those below him he was kind and obliging”. At this time his old house was in the possession of a Mr and Mrs Dudgeon although it was for sale again shortly after, the new owner being Walter Stirling Glas, esq. The house was repeatedly for sale and let throughout the 19th century. A flick through some old Post Office directories enlightens us that from approximately 1858 to 1869, it was being used by Dr. Guthrie’s “Original Ragged Industrial School” .

In 1932, Marionville was purchased by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Edinburgh and St. Andrews for use as the manse for St. Ninian’s & Triduana’s Church, which was built in the grounds at this time. Its last occupant before the church took it over would appear to be one Miss W. Crawford Brown and the house  was sold back into private use within the past few years. The church, which was never actually completed to the intended design, is surprisingly the work of that most British of British architects, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (of red telephone box and Battersea power station fame).

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.