History
Prestwick's name comes from the Old English for, priest's farm: preost meaning "priest" and wic meaning "farm". The town was originally an outlying farm of a religious house.
From Robert the Bruce to James VI, King of Scots, numerous Kings have traversed the coastal walks in and around Prestwick and Troon. Bruce is reputed to have been cured of leprosy by the waters of the well at St Ninians church. The well still exists behind the church.
Although it has been a Burgh of Barony for over a thousand years, it was a village until the railway arrived in the 1840s and the middle class from Glasgow started to build large houses along the coast.
On 28 August 1944 a United States Army Air Force, Douglas C-54 Skymaster 42-72171 on approach into Glasgow Prestwick Airport in bad weather crashed into a residential area of Prestwick, killing all 20 passengers and crew and five people on the ground.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)