On this day, the Lewis chessmen, a group of distinctive 12th-century chess pieces, were put on display for the first time at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. The chessmen were discovered by Malcolm MacCleod in a sandbank on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland in early 1831. The chessmen, totalling 78 pieces, constitute some of the few complete, surviving medieval chess sets, although it is not clear if one single complete set can be assembled from the pieces found. MacCleod sold the chessmen to Captain Roderick Ryrie and eventually 82 of them ended up in the British Museum in London and 11 in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
The Lewis Chessmen
11th April 1831