Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Kirkuk-Sulaimaniya
The foundation of the Chaldean Catholic diocese of Kirkuk has been attributed to Yohannan VIII Hormizd, who was recognised by the Vatican as patriarchal administrator of the patriarch of Babylon in 1780 and, after five decades of disputes and confrontations, as patriarch in 1830. According to the Chaldean Catholic priest Joseph Tfinkdji, Yohannan Hormizd visited the town of Kirkuk in 1789 while travelling from Mosul to Baghdad, and converted its Church of the East community to Catholicism. He is said to have consecrated a Chaldean metropolitan for Kirkuk, Mar Abraham, who resided in Aïnqawa during his reign, and died between 1821 and 1824. The source for this assertion is not clear. Abraham is not mentioned by any other source, and as Yohannan Hormizd himself (then considered by the Vatican to be merely metropolitan of Mosul) is styled 'metropolitan of Kirkuk' in a colophon of 1798, the Kirkuk region would seem to have been part of the diocese of Mosul at this period.
John Erskine, Earl of Mar (1675–1732)
John Erskine, Earl of Mar, KT (1675May 1732) was a Scottish Jacobite who was the eldest son of Charles, Earl of Mar (who died in 1689), from whom he inherited estates that were heavily loaded with debt. He was the 23rd Earl of Mar in the first creation of the earldom. He was also the sixth earl in the seventh creation (of 1565).. He was nicknamed "Bobbing John", for his tendency to shift back and forth from faction to faction, whether from Tory to Whig or Hanoverian to Jacobite. Deprived of office by the new king in 1714, Mar raised the standard of rebellion against the Hanoverians; at the battle of Sheriffmuir in November 1715, Mar's forces outnumbered those of his opponent, but victory eluded him. At Fetteresso his cause was lost, and Mar fled to France, where he would spend the remainder of his life. The parliament passed a Writ of Attainder for treason against Mar in 1716 as punishment for his disloyalty, which was not lifted until 1824. He died in 1732.