title: 1959 in Scotland
text: # 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, 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.
  