On this day in 1715, John Erskine, the 6th Earl of Mar, unfurled the standard of the Old Pretender at Braemar.

Mar raised the standard of behalf of James Francis Edward Stuart , thus starting the first of the major Jacobite Rebellions. The rising failed, largely due to Mar's incompetence, after an inconclusive battle at Sheriffmuir meant that the Jacobites had lost the initiative. The Earl and James fled to France, where Mar remained in exile until his death. He was known as "Bobbing John" because of his vacillating political allegiance.

On this day in 1876, the Scottish physician and physiologist John James Macleod was born near Dunkeld.

After studying medicine at Aberdeen and Leipzig, Macleod became head of the Department of Physiology at the University of Toronto. An expert in sugar metabolism and diabetes, he was approached by Canadian surgeon Frederick Banting, who had realised that if he could isolate the hitherto elusive pancreatic hormone, this may provide a treatment for diabetes. Though Macleod initially scorned his idea, Banting's persistent badgering paid off and he was allowed to join the department to work on his idea. Banting and his co-workers did indeed manage to isolate the hormone, and after diabetic dogs were successfully treated, eventually the ever-sceptical Macleod was convinced, and named it insulin.

Macleod and Banting shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1926 and Macleod returned to Aberdeen as Professor of Physiology in 1928, dying there in 1935.

Today's recipe: a warming pumpkin stew for a cool autumn day.