# 1959 in Scotland

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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, Conservative 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, leader of the Liberal Democrats (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)
** 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.