July 1

The United States Congress meets in two sessions during the year. For some reason, the nation’s collective blood pressure rises whenever both the House and Senate meet to go about doing whatever it is that they do. The people in Scotland had an easy go of it for a while, but the passage of the Scotland Act in 1998 changed all that. On the 1st in 1999, Queen Elizabeth presided over the official opening of the Scottish Parliament. Prior to this occasion, a Scottish parliament had not met in almost three centuries. That goes a long way towards explaining all the newspapers that had been piling up on Edinburg’s porch.