1956 in Scotland

Events from the year 1956 in Scotland.

Incumbents

Secretary of State for Scotland and Keeper of the Great Seal – James Stuart

Law officers

Judiciary

Events

7 March – The first floodlit Scottish Football League match is played at Ibrox Park in Glasgow; home team Rangers F.C. beat Queen of the South 8–0.
1 June – Elsie Stephenson becomes founding director of the Nurse Teaching Unit, University of Edinburgh, the first nurse teaching unit within a British university.
4 July – The National Library of Scotland's first purpose-built premises are opened on George IV Bridge in Edinburgh.
29 July – the Ecurie Ecosse motor racing team, Ninian Sanderson and Ron Flockhart, win the 1956 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
14 August – death of John Crichton-Stuart, 5th Marquess of Bute ; he bequeaths the uninhabited islands of St Kilda to the National Trust for Scotland as a bird sanctuary.
25 September – the TAT-1 transatlantic telephone cable between the UK and North America is inaugurated; it comes ashore near Oban.
4 October – Prince's Cairn unveiled at Loch nan Uamh to mark the spot where Charles Edward Stuart left Scotland in 1746 after failure of the Jacobite rising of 1745.
20 October – Dundee Corporation Tramways last operate.
16 November – Edinburgh Corporation Tramways last operate. Trams return to Edinburgh after much delay on 31 May 2014.
2 December – in the 1956 Summer Olympics at Melbourne, Richard McTaggart of Dundee wins a gold medal in lightweight boxing.
10 December – Thurso life-boat destroyed when its boathouse is burnt out.
The Scottish Medical Journal is first published in Edinburgh following merger of the Edinburgh Medical Journal and The Glasgow Medical Journal.

Births

7 January – Ian Bell, journalist
11 January – Phyllis Logan, actress
12 January – Myra McFadyen, actress
22 February – Philip Kerr, writer
25 February – Davie Cooper, footballer
19 April – Anne Glover, biologist
7 May – Calum MacDonald, Labour MP
2 June – Susan Rae, radio newsreader
22 June - Derek Forbes, Musician
7 September – Robert Reed, judge, President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
26 September – Mick Imlah, poet
3 November – Cathy Jamieson, Labour MP
29 December – Fred MacAulay, comedian
Lachlan Mackinnon, poet and critic

Deaths

11 January – Buchanan Sharp, footballer
30 May – Sir John Stirling-Maxwell, 10th Baronet, Conservative politician and philanthropist
21 September – Bill Struth, football manager
6 December – Helen Duncan, medium