1914 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George V
• Secretary for Scotland and Keeper of the Great Seal – Thomas McKinnon Wood

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Robert Munro
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Thomas Brash Morison

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Strathclyde
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Kingsburgh
• Chairman of the Scottish Land Court – Lord Kennedy

  Events

• 21 February – Militant suffragette Ethel Moorhead, imprisoned in Calton Jail, Edinburgh, for attempted fire-raising, becomes the first in Scotland to suffer force-feeding while on hunger strike; four days later she is released on health grounds.
• 14 April – A collision at Burntisland railway station between an express and a shunting goods train following a signalman's error kills two locomotive crew and injures twelve passengers.
• 2 May – Glasgow newspaper The Saturday Post, a predecessor of The Sunday Post, changes its title to The Sporting Post.
• 18 June – A railway bridge collapse at Carrbridge following a torrential thunderstorm kills five people.
• July – Militant suffragette Fanny Parker is arrested while attempting to set fire to Burns Cottage, Alloway.
• 3 July – Govanhill Baths in Glasgow inaugurated.
• 4 July – A memorial is unveiled at Hawick to the Battle of Hornshole.
• 10 July – A royal visit to Scotland is interrupted by suffragettes: one attempts to reach the King and Queen's carriage at Dundee; and Rhoda Fleming leaps onto the footboard of the royal car at Perth; police protect her from an angry crowd.
• 30 July – Norwegian aviator Tryggve Gran makes the first crossing of the North Sea by aeroplane, flying from Cruden Bay to Jæren in Norway in the Blériot XI monoplane Ca Flotte.
• August – The British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet is formed in Scapa Flow.
• 4 August – World War I: Declaration of war by the United Kingdom on the German Empire.
• 9 August – World War I: rams and sinks Imperial German Navy submarine U-15 off Fair Isle, the first U-boat claimed by the Royal Navy.
• 28 August-28 September – World War I: German spy Carl Hans Lody is operating from Edinburgh.
• September – World War I
• * Revolutionary socialist teacher John Maclean holds his first anti-war rally, on Glasgow Green.
• * Rumours spread that Russian troops, landed on the east coast of Scotland, have passed on trains through Britain en route to the Western Front.
• 5 September – World War I: Scout cruiser is sunk by German submarine U-21 in the Firth of Forth with loss of all but nine of her crew, The first ship ever to be sunk by a locomotive torpedo fired from a submarine.
• 8 September – armed merchant cruiser HMS Oceanic runs aground on the Shaalds o' Foula and is lost.
• 14 September – World War I: Scottish soldiers William Henry Johnston, Ross Tollerton and George Wilson are awarded the Victoria Cross in separate actions on the Western Front.
• 26 September – World War I: the 15th Infantry Division, newly formed as part of Kitchener's Army, first parades as a unit.
• 15 October – World War I: Protected cruiser is torpedoed by German submarine U-9 off Aberdeen, sinking in under ten minutes with the loss of 524 crew and only seventy survivors.
• 16/17 October – World War I: Scare of submarine attack in Scapa Flow causes the Grand Fleet to disperse while the anchorage is secured.
• 22 October – World War I: Glaswegian Private Henry May, a regular soldier with 1st Battalion, The Cameronians at La Boutillerie, is awarded the Victoria Cross for rescuing wounded comrades.
• 3 November – Trawler Ivanhoe, requisitioned as an armed patrol vessel, strikes the Black Rock near Leith while minelaying and sinks.
• 23 November – World War I: German submarine U-18 is intercepted and forced to scuttle while attempting to enter Scapa Flow.
• 25 November – World War I: sixteen Heart of Midlothian F.C. players enlist en masse – seven will die in action before the war ends.
• St Andrew's Cathedral, Aberdeen, raised to the status of cathedral within the Episcopal Church.

  Births

• 1 January – Alexander Reid, playwright
• 13 March – Kay Tremblay film actress, living in Canada
• 26 May – Archie Duncan, actor
• 14 June – Alexander Buchanan Campbell, architect
• 14 June – Ruthven Todd, poet, artist and novelist
• 25 June – Matthew McDiarmid, literary scholar, essayist, campaigning academic and poet
• 15 July – Gavin Maxwell, naturalist and writer
• 2 September – Bill Shankly, footballer and manager, including Liverpool F.C.
• 4 November – Duncan Macrae, international rugby union player
• 20 December – Robert Colquhoun, painter, printmaker and theatre set designer
• 29 December – Tom Weir, climber, naturalist and broadcaster
• Richard Scott, general practitioner and academic
• Ann Scott-Moncrieff, author

  Deaths

• 1 March – Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 4th Earl of Minto, soldier and colonial administrator
• 16 March – Sir John Murray, oceanographer, marine biologist and limnologist
• 31 March – William Henry Oliphant Smeaton, writer, journalist, editor, historian and educator
• 26 June – Edward Calvert, domestic architect
• 30 September – Sir Henry Littlejohn, forensic surgeon
• 21 October – James William Cleland, Liberal Party MP for Glasgow Bridgeton
• 19 December – William Bruce, soldier, posthumous recipient of the Victoria Cross
• 25 December – Donald MacKinnon, Celtic scholar

  The arts

• 16 March – the Usher Hall opens in Edinburgh as a concert hall.
• John MacDougall Hay's novel Gillespie is published.
• Bandmaster Frederick J. Ricketts composes the "Colonel Bogey March" while serving with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders at Fort George.