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26 February 1950: The death of Sir Harry Lauder, one of Scotland's greatest singers and entertainers.
27 November 1950: The death of the professional golfer and golf course designer James Braid.
25 December 1950: Scottish Nationalists steal the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey in London, where it has been kept since Edward I took it from Scone in 1286.
1951: The population of Scotland reaches 5,096,000.
17 March 1951: The cartoon character Dennis the Menace appears for the first time in the comic The Beano.
11 April 1951: The Stone of Destiny stolen from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1950, is left in the ruins of Arbroath Abbey and later returned to London.
23 May 1951: The death in Edinburgh of Christina Kay, the schoolteacher who became the model for the main character in Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
9 September 1951: The death of Andrew Blain Baird, who in 1910, while working as a blacksmith in Rothesay, made the first flight by an entirely Scottish designed and built aeroplane.
6 February 1952: King George VI is succeeded by Queen Elizabeth II. There are protests in Scotland that she should be titled Queen Elizabeth I of the United Kingdom.
14 March 1952: The first TV signals are broadcast in Scotland from the Kirk o'Shotts transmitter using the 405 line system. The program is a performance by the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.
9 June 1952: The death in Canada of John MacGregor VC, MC & Bar, DCM, a First World War recipient of the Victoria Cross.
31 January 1953: The early roll-on/roll-off ferry, MV Princess Victoria, sinks in a storm while en route from Stranraer to Larne with the loss of 133 lives.
31 January 1953: 66 members of the crew of the SS Clan Macquarrie are rescued after it runs aground near Borve on the Isle of Lewis in a storm.
5 March 1953: The paddle steamer The Maid of the Loch is lowered into Loch Lomond for the first time.
16 April 1953: The Royal Yacht Britannia is launched at John Brown's Clydebank shipyard.
26 February 1955: The death of Agnes Mackenzie, CBE, the eminent historian and author.
11 March 1955: The death of Sir Alexander Fleming, the eminent biologist primarily remembered for his discovery in 1928 of the antibiotic penicillin.
16 November 1956: The last tram (for many years) runs in Edinburgh.
29 March 1958: The death at Hutton Castle in the Scottish Borders of Sir William Burrell, the shipping magnate who gifted his huge collection of art, the Burrell Collection, to Glasgow City Council.
3 January 1959: The death of Edwin Muir, one of Scotlands best 20th Century poets.
2 May 1959: The official opening takes place of Scotland's first nuclear power station at Chapelcross in Dumfries & Galloway.
18 September 1959: 47 miners are killed in the Auchengeich mining disaster at Auchengeich Colliery in North Lanarkshire.
8 December 1959: The lifeboat RNLB Mona, based at Broughty Ferry, capsizes in a storm in St Andrews Bay with the loss of all eight crew.
28 March 1960: Nineteen firemen are killed in the Cheapside Street whisky bond fire in Glasgow, Britain's worst peacetime fire services disaster.
1 December 1960: The death in Glasgow of Ethel McDonald, an anarchist best known for her propaganda broadcasts on Barcelona radio during the Spanish Civil War.
3 March 1961: The US nuclear submarine tender USS Proteus arrives at the new Polaris base at Holy Loch.
4 September 1962: The trams stop running in Glasgow.
2 May 1963: The Rootes Car Factory opens at Linwood under a Government policy designed to place industry in deprived areas. It produces the Hillman Imp.
15 August 1963: Henry Burnett becomes the last man to be hanged in Scotland, having been convicted of the murder of merchant seaman Thomas Guyan.
16 August 1963: The death of Joan Eardley, an important Glasgow-based artist who founded the "Catterline School" of artists.
25 September 1963: The death in Inverness of Captain Ted Fresson, a pioneer aviator who is primarily remembered for establishing Highland Airways in 1933.
4 September 1964: The Forth Road Bridge is opened between North Queensferry and South Queensferry, west of Edinburgh.
20 November 1964: The first part of the M8 Motorway between Glasgow and Edinburgh is opened.
12 August 1965: The death of Willie Gallacher, a trade unionist who served as a Communist Member of Parliament.
5 September 1965: The death in Milngavie of Tom Johnston, who served as Secretary of State for Scotland from 1941 to 1945 and is best remembered for his role in driving ahead a number of large hydro-electricity schemes across the Highlands.
15 October 1965: The Ben Cruachan hydro-electric scheme near Oban opens.
18 August 1966: The Tay Road Bridge opens linking Dundee city centre with Fife.
25 May 1967: Celtic becomes the first British football club to win the European Cup. It fields a team of eleven Scots, all from west-central Scotland.
1 August 1967: Queen's College in Dundee becomes a fully fledged university in its own right and is renamed the University of Dundee.
20 September 1967: The liner Queen Elizabeth II is launched at Clydebank.
2 November 1967: Winnie Ewing wins Hamilton for the Scottish National Party in a by-election, taking the first ever seat for the party.
1968: The Conservative Party, under Edward Heath, adopt a policy of promoting a devolved Scottish Parliament.
15 January 1968: A hurricane strikes Strathclyde leaving 2,000 people homeless and killing 20.
7 April 1968: Racing Driver Jim Clark is killed in a crash at the Hockenheimring racing circuit in Germany.
17 March 1969: The lifeboat stationed at Longhope in Orkney, T.G.B., capsizes with the loss of all eight crew during a severe storm.
7 September 1969: The naturalist and author, Gavin Maxwell, best known for his work with otters, dies in Inverness.
15 February 1970: The death in Kent of Hugh Dowding, 1st Baron Dowding, the commander of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain.
26 June 1970: The Kingston Bridge, carrying the M8 motorway over the River Clyde in Glasgow, is opened.
2 January 1971: 66 football fans are killed and over 200 more are injured at in a crush as they try to leave Ibrox Park, the ground of Rangers F.C. in Glasgow.
25 May 1971: Production begins at the Invergordon aluminium works near Dingwall.
16 June 1971: The death of Lord Reith, viewed by many as the father of the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation.
1 September 1971: The last gas street lamps in Glasgow are phased out and replaced by electric lights.
21 October 1971: A gas explosion at the Clarkston Toll shopping centre south of Glasgow kills 22 people.
2 December 1971: The last two permanently resident families leave the island of Scarp, off Harris in the Western Isles.
10 February 1972: The Island of Rockall, 250 miles west into the Atlantic formally becomes part of Scotland.
15 January 1973: The death at the age of 81 of the influential highland author, Neil M. Gunn.
30 March 1973: The death of Sir Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton and 11th Duke of Brandon, a pioneering aviator and the man who Deputy German Führer Rudolph Hess flew to Scotland to try to negotiate with in May 1941.
11 April 1973: The death of Georgina MacKinnon, who served as chairwoman of Drambuie and did much to popularise the traditional MacKinnon liqueur worldwide.
19 October 1973: The boat belonging to internationally famous as country and western singer - and Shetland fisherman - Thomas Fraser runs aground and sinks.
5 December 1973: Sir Robert Watson-Watt, the inventor of radar, dies in Inverness. He is buried in Pitlochry.
28 February 1974: At the General Election the Scottish National Party take 22% of the vote and 7 parliamentary seats.
10 October 1974: By the second General Election of the year, Harold Wilson's Labour Party has accepted the need for devolution. The Scottish Nationalists take 30% of the vote and 11 parliamentary seats.
7 November 1974: The death in Orkney of Eric Linklater, an author who wrote 23 novels, plus a great deal more.
1975: The Labour Government publishes a white paper proposing a Scottish Assembly which will exercise a wide range of powers.
11 June 1975: The first North Sea oil is pumped ashore at Sullom Voe in Shetland.
20 October 1976: The death of the author Elizabeth Jane Cameron, who, writing as Jane Duncan, was best best known for her "Reachfar" series of semi-autobiographical novels.
19 November 1976: The death in Suffolk of Sir Basil Spence, the eminent architect who produced many buildings in the UK and beyond in the Modernist/Brutalist style.
29 April 1977: British Aerospace takes over Scottish Aviation.
6 January 1978: The death in Shetland of Thomas Fraser, a fisherman who, since his death, has become internationally famous as a country and western singer.
February 1978: The Scotland Act is passed, but with an amendment stating that 40% of the whole Scottish electorate must approve devolution in a referendum.
9 September 1978: Hugh MacDiarmid, considered by many to be the most important Scottish poet of the 20th Century, dies at his home in Biggar.
25 December 1978: The death in Sussex of Victoria Drummond, the first woman to serve as a chief engineer in the Merchant Navy and first woman member of Institute of Marine Engineers.
7 February 1979: 12,000 players and spectators descended on the frozen Lake of Menteith for Scotland's only outdoor curling tournament, known as the Bonspiel or the Grand Match.
1 March 1979: The Scots vote on devolution. 51.6% of those voting vote "yes", but the turnout is only 63.8%. As a result, only 39.2% of the whole Scottish electorate votes "yes", less than required under the Scotland Act. The Scottish National Party then tables a motion of no confidence in Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan, which it wins by one vote. In the General Election that follows in May 1979, Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister of a Conservative government.
9 November 1979: Forestry worker Robert Taylor encounters what he believes to be a UFO near Livingston in what becomes known as The Livingston Incident or the Robert Taylor Incident.
6 January 1980: The author A.J. Cronin, creator of Dr Finlay, dies in Switzerland.
1980: The Singer Sewing Machine Factory in Clydebank, once the world's largest factories, closes with the loss of 25,000 jobs.
23 February 1981: The death in Aberdeen of Nan Shepherd, a poet and author who set her novels in north-east Scotland and also wrote about the Cairngorms.
29 September 1981: The death in Liverpool of Bill Shankly, the highly respected football manager best known for leading Liverpool FC to a string of successes in the 1960s and 1970s.
18 November 1982: The South Ford causeway between Benbecula and South Uist is opened in a ceremony held in a severe gale.
21 October 1983: The building designed to house the Burrell Collection in Glasgow's Pollok Park is opened by The Queen.
8 August 1984: The Queen opens the Kylesku Bridge in Sutherland, which has taken two years to build.
10 September 1985: The death in Wales of Jock Stein, the football manager best remembered as manager of Celtic and of the Scotland national team.
30 September 1985: The death in New York of Helen MacInnes, the Scottish-born author of espionage novels.
10 October 1985: The death in London of Doris Reynolds, a geologist who spent much of her career in Scotland.
2 February 1987: The death in Munich of thriller and adventure novel writer, Alistair MacLean.
July 1988: The broadly-based Campaign for a Scottish Assembly publishes "A Claim of Right for Scotland". This proposes the creation of a Constitutional Convention to consider Home Rule.
28 April 1988: The Prince and Princess of Wales open the Glasgow Garden Festival.
6 July 1988: The North Sea oil rig, Piper Alpha, explodes, killing 167 men.
21 December 1988: Pan Am flight 103 en route from London to New York is destroyed over Lockerbie, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew on board, and 11 people on the ground.
March 1989: The Scottish Constitutional Convention meets for the first time. It publishes its plans for a Scottish Parliament on 30 November 1990.
April 1989: The Conservative Government introduced the deeply unpopular Poll Tax in Scotland.
15 January 1990: Strathclyde Regional Council applies for 250,000 summary warrants against residents refusing to pay the highly controversial "Poll Tax", introduced in Scotland in 1989.
4 November 1990: The death of Colonel Sir David Stirling, the Scottish landowner, keen mountaineer, World War II army officer, and founder of the Special Air Service.
1991: The population of Scotland stands at 4,962,000, or 134,000 below the 1951 figure.
20 February 1992: The death near Kirkliston of Isabel Hutchison, the pioneering arctic traveller and author.
19 October 1992: The Natural History Visitor Centre in Port Charlotte on Islay is opened by Magnus Magnusson.
5 January 1993: The oil tanker MV Braer runs aground on the coast of Shetland, leading to large-scale environmental damage.
20 March 1993: The theologian, philosopher, and logician John Duns Scotus is beatified by Pope John Paul II and seems destined for the path of sainthood.
20 January 1994: The death of Sir Matt Busby, the football player and manager best remembered for his management of Manchester United.
12 May 1994: The death of the leader of the Labour Party, John Smith.
2 June 1994: A Royal Air Force Chinook helicopter crashes on the Mull of Kintyre, killing all twenty-five passengers and four crew on board.
26 September 1994: The death of the novelist, playwright and radio producer, Jessie Kesson.
1995: The film "Braveheart" is released starring Mel Gibson as William Wallace. It is extremely popular and gives a huge boost to the sense of national identity in Scotland.
13 May 1995: Alison Hargreaves from Spean Bridge becomes the first woman to climb Mount Everest solo and without oxygen.
29 June 1995: The first spirit legally distilled on the Isle of Arran since 1836 flows through the spirit safe of the Isle of Arran Distillery in Lochranza.
16 October 1995: The Skye Bridge is opened to traffic.
30 December 1995: Scotland's joint lowest temperature, of -27.2°C, is recorded at Altnaharra in Sutherland.
1996: The Ravenscraig Steel works ner Motherwell closes down, bringing to an end Scotland's involvement in large scale steel production.
1996: Scotland's "Silicon Glen" focused on Livingston produces 35% of Europe's PCs and 12% of the world's semi-conductors and employs 55,000 people.
13 March 1996: A lone gunman murders 16 primary school children and their teacher in Dunblane.
19 March 1996: The death of William Hutchinson (W.H.) Murray, one of the greats of Scottish mountaineering.
1 April 1996: Local government in Scotland is reorganised, with the creation of 32 unitary council areas replacing the previous two-tier structure of regions and districts.
15 June 1996: The death of Sir Fitzroy Maclean, the diplomat, soldier, adventurer, writer and politician: and, according to some accounts, a partial model for the fictional character of James Bond.
24 November 1996: The death in Inverness of Sorley MacLean, one of the most important Scottish poets of the 20th Century, and seen by many as the father of the renaissance of the Gaelic language.
30 November 1996: The Conservative Government, under John Major and Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Forsyth, returns the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey to Edinburgh Castle, where it is put on display beside the Honours of Scotland.
1997: Dolly the Sheep, the first genetically cloned mammal is created by scientists at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh.
1 May 1997: The Labour Party under Tony Blair defeats the Conservatives in the General Election. Outgoing Prime Minister John Major leaves 10 Downing Street to go and watch cricket at Lords. The Conservative Party emerges without a single parliamentary seat in Scotland.
12 June 1997: The island of Eigg passes into community ownership when it is purchased by the Eigg Heritage Trust.
July 1997: Secretary of State for Scotland, Donald Dewar, issues a White Paper setting out plans for a referendum on devolution to be followed by a Devolution Bill.
9 August 1997: The Isle of Arran Distillery's new visitor centre is opened by HM The Queen during a tour of the Western Isles on the Royal Yacht Britannia.
11 September 1997: A referendum asks Scots two questions. The first is whether there should be a separate Parliament for Scotland. The second is whether that Parliament should have the power to vary levels of taxation. 74.3% vote yes to the first question, and 63.5% vote yes to the second question.
11 December 1997: The Royal Yacht Britannia is decommissioned at Portsmouth Naval Base after a 44-yareer service life in which she carried the Queen and the Royal Family on 968 official voyages in almost every part of the globe.
6 April 1998: The US Senate approves the celebration of an annual Tartan Day in recognition of the achievements of Scottish Americans.
21 July 1998: The death in Dundee of Oswald Wynd, the novelist who sometimes wrote under the pseudonym "Gavin Black".
November 1998: Royal Assent is given in to the Scotland Act 1998.
8 April 1999: Prince Charles, who had previously revealed that he had been a regular visitor to the island since 1987, returns to Berneray to open the 900m causeway linking it to North Uist.
6 May 1999: Elections are held for the Scottish Parliament and the 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament - MSPs - take their seats on 12 May 1999.
12 May 1999: Dr Winifred M Ewing MSP, as acting Presiding Officer, opens the first gathering in 292 years of the new Scottish Parliament with the words: "The Scottish Parliament which adjourned on the 25th of March in the year 1707 is hereby reconvened".
1 July 1999: Queen Elizabeth II opens the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. The First Minister of the Scottish Executive, the devolved Scottish Government, is Donald Dewar, who as Secretary of State for Scotland since 1997 had been the architect of devolution.
31 March 2000: The Chief of the Clan MacNeil leases Kisimul Castle on Barra to Historic Scotland for 1,000 years.
11 October 2000: Donald Dewar, Scotland's first First Minister, dies in office. He is succeeded as First Minister in the Scottish Executive by Henry McLeish.
November 2001: Jack McConnell becomes Scotland's third First Minister in November 2001.
9 November 2001: The death in Edinburgh of Dorothy Dunnett, a historical novelist, portrait painter and an important figure on the Scottish arts and literary scene.
15 March 2002: Ownership of the island of Gigha is transferred to the Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust following a community buyout.
29 March 2002: Longannet coal mine in Fife, the last deep coal mine in Scotland, closes following serious flooding, bringing to an end centuries of deep coal mining in the country.
25 September 2003: The death in Beith of Alastair Borthwick, a journalist, broadcaster and author who wrote a classic book about climbing in Scotland.
9 October 2004: The Queen opens the new Scottish Parliament Building.
11 December 2004: The death at the age of 101 of Margaret Fay Shaw, the American writer who did much to record the music and culture of South Uist.
21 December 2004 : Tolls are lifted on the Skye Bridge: crossing is now free.
22 April 2005: The death in London of renowned artist and sculptor Sir Eduardo Paolozzi.
14 July 2005: HRH Prince Andrew reopens the consolidated and restored Drumin Castle in Moray.
26 March 2006: Smoking is prohibited in all enclosed public spaces in Scotland.
28 March 2006: The Black Watch Regiment becomes the 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland as part of a controversial amalgamation of all of Scotland's infantry regiments.
3 May 2007 : Elections for the Scottish Executive result in no single party having overall control of the Scottish Parliament: though the Scottish National Party emerge as the largest party by one seat. The SNP goes on to form a minority government with Alex Salmond as First Minister of Scotland.
2 January 2008: The death in the Isle of Man of George MacDonald Fraser, an author known both for his fiction and his non fiction, and and probably best remembered as the author of the "Flashman" series of historical novels.
11 February 2008: Tolls are removed from the three remaining Scottish toll bridges, the Erskine Bridge, the Tay Road Bridge, and the Forth Road Bridge.
18 January 2009: Just a few weeks before the completion of a £4m restoration project, Raasay House is severely damaged by fire.
5 May 2011: In a remarkable victory the Scottish National Party wins an overall majority in elections to the Scottish Parliament. They win 69 out of the total of 129 seats, an increase of 23 on the number they won in 2007.
25 January 2012: First Minister Alex Salmond launches a consultation on the SNP Government's proposals for a referendum on Scottish independence, which they hope to hold in the autumn of 2014.
20 October 2012: A twinning ceremony takes place in Glenelg, complete with a live link to NASA, to celebrate the twinning of the village with Glenelg on Mars.
18 September 2014: Those eligible to vote in Scotland vote in a referendum on the question "Should Scotland be an independent country?". The result is a "no" vote, by 55% to 45%.
7 May 2015: In a UK General Election all but three of the 59 Westminster parliamentary seats in Scotland are won by the Scottish National Party, while across the UK as a whole the Conservative Party gains a narrow overall majority.
21 February 2016: The death of Captain Eric Brown, a renowned naval aviator and test pilot who holds a record unlikely ever to be beaten for the largest number of different aircraft types flown by a single person, 487. In later life he was widely acknowledged by others as "the greatest pilot ever".
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