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

Judiciary

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
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)
30 November – Lorraine Kelly, television presenter
date unknown
* Meg Bateman, Gaelic writer and poet
* Robert Crawford, poet and literary scholar
* Andy Gray, actor
* Pam Hogg, fashion designer
* Alexander Stoddart, sculptor

Deaths

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

The arts

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