27 July 1689 saw the Battle of Killiecrankie.

The battle occurred when the government sent north an army to deal with Viscount Dundee and his newly formed Jacobite army in its Atholl heartland. However, at Killiecrankie the Jacobites delivered a crushing blow to the government troops under General Mackay, but at the loss of Dundee. Without Dundee's leadership, the uprising foundered after meeting strong resistance from Cameronians at Dunkeld. During the battle, one of Mackay's soldiers, a Donald MacBean, is said to have jumped 18ft across the River Garry to safety at what is now known as the "Soldier's Leap".

On 27 July 1913 John Cairncross, Scottish spy, was born.

Cairncross was the so-called "fifth man" in the ring of spies recruited at Cambridge University in the 1930s to work for Moscow. Soviet double-agent, Oleg Gordievsky, who defected to Britain in 1985, had publicly named Cairncross, a former Foreign Office and Treasury official, as the fifth man, but this was denied by Cairncross. However, in 1991 he admitted to being the fifth man in the spy ring comprising Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt.

In 1995, he returned to Britain after 40 years of self-imposed exile to write his memoirs. He died before they were completed.