1956 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Elizabeth II
• Secretary of State for Scotland and Keeper of the Great Seal – James Stuart

  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

• 7 March – the first floodlit Scottish Football League match is played at Ibrox Park in Glasgow; home team Rangers F.C. beat Queen of the South 8-0.
• 1 June – Elsie Stephenson becomes founding director of the Nurse Teaching Unit, University of Edinburgh, the first nurse teaching unit within a British university.
• 4 July – the National Library of Scotland's first purpose-built premises are opened on George IV Bridge in Edinburgh.
• 29 July – the Ecurie Ecosse motor racing team, Ninian Sanderson and Ron Flockhart, win the 1956 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
• 14 August – death of John Crichton-Stuart, 5th Marquess of Bute ; he bequeaths the uninhabited islands of St Kilda to the National Trust for Scotland as a bird sanctuary.
• 25 September – the TAT-1 transatlantic telephone cable between the UK and North America is inaugurated; it comes ashore near Oban.
• 4 October – Prince's Cairn unveiled at Loch nan Uamh to mark the spot where Charles Edward Stuart left Scotland in 1746 after failure of the Jacobite rising of 1745.
• 20 October – Dundee Corporation Tramways last operate.
• 16 November – Edinburgh Corporation Tramways last operate.
• 2 December – in the 1956 Summer Olympics at Melbourne, Richard McTaggart of Dundee wins a gold medal in lightweight boxing.
• 10 December – Thurso life-boat destroyed when its boathouse is burnt out.
• The Scottish Medical Journal is first published in Edinburgh following merger of the Edinburgh Medical Journal and The Glasgow Medical Journal.

  Births

• 7 January – Ian Bell, journalist
• 11 January – Phyllis Logan, actress
• 22 February – Philip Kerr, writer
• 25 February – Davie Cooper, footballer
• 19 April – Anne Glover, biologist
• 7 May – Calum MacDonald, Labour MP
• 2 June – Susan Rae, radio newsreader
• 7 September – Robert Reed, judge, President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom
• 26 September – Mick Imlah, poet
• 3 November – Cathy Jamieson, Labour MP
• 29 December – Fred MacAulay, comedian
• Lachlan Mackinnon, poet and critic

  Deaths

• 11 January – Buchanan Sharp, footballer
• 30 May – Sir John Stirling-Maxwell, 10th Baronet, Conservative politician and philanthropist
• 21 September – Bill Struth, football manager
• 6 December – Helen Duncan, medium