1959 in Scotland

Events from the year 1959 in Scotland.

Incumbents

• Secretary of State for Scotland and Keeper of the Great Seal – John Maclay

Law officers

• Lord Advocate – William Rankine Milligan
• Solicitor General for Scotland – William Grant

Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Clyde
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Thomson
• Chairman of the Scottish Land Court – Lord Gibson

Events

• 1 January – 5 members of the Universal Hiking Club of Glasgow die in a storm in the Grampians.
• 9 January – Clyde-built fisheries protection vessel Freya founders off Caithness with the loss of 3 of her crew of 20.
• 28 January – a Glasgow Corporation Tramways tramcar collides with a lorry and catches fire in Shettleston Road with 3 killed.
• 2 May – the Chapelcross nuclear power station opens.
• 4 July – British Railways close their Kilmarnock Works.
• 18 September – Auchengeich mining disaster: 47 miners die as the result of an underground fire at Auchengeich Colliery, Lanarkshire.
• 8 October – United Kingdom general election results in a record third successive Conservative victory. Harold Macmillan increases the Conservative majority to 100 seats across the UK but the Unionist Party in Scotland loses 4 seats.
• 14 November – the nuclear Dounreay fast reactor achieves criticality.
• 17 November – Prestwick and Renfrew Airports become the first in the U.K. with duty-free shops.
• 6 December – Aberdeen trawler George Robb runs aground at Duncansby Head in a severe gale with the loss of all 12 crew.
• 7 December – Leith coaster Servus runs aground below Dunbeath Castle; her crew are rescued by life-boat.
• 8 December – Broughty Ferry life-boat Mona capsizes on service to North Carr Lightship with the loss of all 8 of the life-boat crew.
• William Theodore Heard is elevated to cardinal, the first Scot to hold such an office since the Reformation.
• St. Cuthbert's Co-operative Society opens Scotland's first supermarket in Edinburgh.
• North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board's Sloy-Awe Hydro-Electric Power Scheme becomes fully operational; and peat-fired generating station at Altnabreac opened.
• North Highland College established.
• The fossil ichthyosaur Dearcmhara is first discovered by Brian Shawcross on the Trotternish peninsula of Skye.

Births

• 31 January – Heather Anderson, SNP politician
• 12 April – Jackson Carlaw, politician, leader of the Scottish Conservatives
• 16 April – Alison Ramsay, field hockey player
• 27 April – Sheena Easton, singer
• 27 May – Gerard Kelly, television and pantomime actor (died 2010 in London)
• 9 July – Jim Kerr, rock singer-songwriter
• 16 July – James MacMillan, composer
• 27 July – Siobhan Redmond, actress
• 28 July – Lorraine Fullbrook, Conservative politician
• 31 July – Andrew Marr, print and television journalist
• 29 August – Eddi Reader, folk singer-songwriter
• 7 September – Rona Munro, dramatist and screenwriter
• 8 September – Judy Murray, tennis player and coach
• 10 October – Mark Johnston, racehorse trainer
• 25 November – Charles Kennedy, politician, leader of the Liberal Democrats (UK) (died 2015)
• 30 November – Lorraine Kelly, television presenter
• date unknown
• Meg Bateman, Gaelic writer and poet
• Robert Crawford, poet and literary scholar
• Andy Gray, actor (died 2021)
• Pam Hogg, fashion designer (died 2025)
• Alexander Stoddart, sculptor

Deaths

• 2 July – William Weir, 1st Viscount Weir, industrialist and politician (born 1877)
• 1 October – Evelyn Vida Baxter, ornithologist (born 1879)
• 15 November – Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1869)
• 25 November – Robert Smyth McColl, footballer and retail store founder (born 1876)

The arts

• Jane Duncan's first novel My Friends the Miss Boyds is published by Macmillan.

See also

• 1959 in Northern Ireland

References