Firsts And Lasts For Scotland

80 AD The Romans under Agricola invaded Scotland for the first time.

208 The last Roman invasion of Caledonia took place, led by Septimus Severus.

430 The first Christian church in Scotland was established at Whithorn by St Ninian.

c.843 Kenneth MacAlpin became the first King of the Scots and Picts. 1099 Donald III became the last king of Scots to be buried on the island of lona.

1250 Queen Margaret, wife of Malcolm III, was canonised, becoming Scotland’s only royal saint.

1349 The first cases of the Black Death in Scotland.

1371 Robert II, first of the Stewart monarchs, came to the throne.

1383 Walter Wardlaw became the first cardinal appointed in Scotland.

1411 The first university in Scotland was founded at St Andrews.

1493 John Macdonald, the fourth Lord of the Isles became the last Lord of the Isles when James IV forfeited his lands.

1508 Walter Chepman and Andrew Myllar set up the first Scottish printing press, in Edinburgh.

1600 Charles I was born, the last to be born in Scotland.

1645 The last major smallpox epidemic in Scotland.

1688 The last of the Stewart monarchs, James VII (and 11 of England) fled to France.

1695 The first hank in Scotland, the Bank of Scotland, was founded.

1725 The first circulating library in Great Britain was started by Allan Ramsay, the bookseller and poet from Leadhills.

1726 The first medical school in Scotland was established at Edinburgh University.

1728 The Royal Bank of Scotland introduced the overdraft system.

1736 The first public theatre in Scotland was opened in Carruber’s Close in Edinburgh.

1760 Thomas Braidwood (1715—1806) opened the first school for the deaf and dumb in Great Britain, in Edinburgh.

1768 The first Encyclopedia Brittanica was printed in Scotland, by Wilham Smelhe.

1777 The first coloured banknote in Scotland produced by the Royal Bank of Scotland (one guinea, soon withdrawn).

1784 James ‘Balloon’ Tytler made the first ascent in a hot ait balloon in Scotland.

1801 The first national census was made in Scotland.

1807 The first museum in Scotland, The Hunterian Museum, was founded.

1813 The last great auk in Great Britain was killed on the island of Papa Westray, Orkney.

1824 The first municipal fire brigade in the world was founded in Edinburgh, under the leadership of James Braidwood.

1831 The first passenger rail service in Scotland opened on the line between Glasgow and Garnkirk.

1842 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made their first visit to Scotland.

1847 The horse-drawn mail coach made its last journey from Edinburgh to London.

1850 The first railway ferry in the world came into use in Scotland, carrying goods wagons from Granton near Edinburgh to Burntisland in Fife.

1860 The first open golf championship was held in Scotland, at St Andrews.

1853 First use of chloroform at a royal birth, by James Young Simpson, at the birth of Prince Leopold to Queen Victoria.

1862 The last woman to be publicly executed in Scotland, Mary Anne Timney, was executed at Dumfries for the murder of a neighbour.

1868 The last public hanging in Scotland took place in Dumfries. Robert Smith was executed for murder.
1871 The first municipally funded museum in Scotland opened in Paisley

1878 The first governing body for state-run prisons, the Scottish Prison Commission, came into being.

1888 The first convict prison in Scotland was opened at Peterhead. The term ‘convicts’ applied at that time to prisoners who had been sentenced to penal servitude. Until Peterhead came into being, prisoners sentenced to hard labour were sent to England.

1894 Marion Gilchrist (1864—1952) became the first woman to graduate from Glasgow University and the first woman to graduate in medicine in Scotland.

1899 The Clydesdale Bank became the first bank in Scotland to use adding machines.

1915 The first outpatient antenatal clinic in Britain was opened at the Edinburgh Royal Maternity and Simpson Memorial Maternity Pavilion, Edinburgh.

1923 The first radio broadcasts in Scotland were made in Rex House, Bath Street, Glasgow.

1923 On 10th October, 1923, Susan Newell was hanged Duke Street Prison, Glasgow for the murder of a boy. She was the last woman to be executed in Scotland.

1930 On August 21, Princess Margaret Rose was born, the first royal baby to be born in Scotland since Charles 1 (1600).

1930 On August 29, the last inhabitants left St Kilda.

1939 The first enemy air raids of World War 11 on Scotland were made on the Forth Estuary.

1945 On the 7th May, the last enemy attack of World War II on British territory took place in the Forth Estuary. Two allied ships (Avondale Park, a British ship and Snelandi, a Norwegian vessel) were sunk by U-boat torpedoes.

1946 The first settlement of Cistercian monks in Scotland since the Reformation was founded at Nunraw, Haddingron, East Lothian.

1947 The first Edinburgh Festival was launched.

1948 The first mobile bank branches were introduced by the Clydesdale Bank.

1952 The first television broadcasts went out in Scotland.The first television play made in Scotland was byJ M Barrie ‘The Old Lady Shows her Medals’. The first outside broadcast made in Scotland was of the Edinburgh
Military Tattoo.

1958 The Clydesdale Bank became the first Scottish hank to introduce personal loans.

1959 The first nuclear power station in Scotland was opened at Chapelcross in Dumfriesshire.

1960 The first moving picture of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, was taken.

1963 The last hanging in Scotland was carried Out at Craiginches prison, Aberdeen, on August 15. Henry John Burnett was hanged for the murder of a seaman.

1966 The Clydesdale Bank became the first bank in Britain to supply customers with cheque guarantee cards.

1966 Sir James Arnot Hamilton, a Scot, became the first director-general of the Concorde project.

1966 Glasgow Celtic became the first British side to win the European Cup, beating Inter Milan 2—i in Lisbon.

1975 The first North Sea oil was piped to the Scottish mainland at Peterhead.

1976 John Ogilvie of Keith was canonised, becoming the first Scottish saint since St Margaret (canonised 1250).

1977 The first successful cloning of an animal in the world was achieved with the birth of Dolly the Sheep at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh.

1978 Grace MacDonald from Denny became the first Scottish woman — and the second in the world — to give birth to a ‘test-tube’ baby. The baby was a boy, named Alastair.

1997 Mohammed Sarwar was elected as the first Muslim MP in Scotland, serving the constituency of Govan, Glasgow (Labour).

1999 On May 12, the 129 members of the new devolved Scottish Parliament took their seats for the first time.

2003 In May, the last travelling post office (rail) operating from Scotland made its final journey from Glasgow to Cardiff.

2003 In July, Cameron Stout from Orkney became the first Scot to win the TV reality game show ‘Big Brother’.

Return to Scottish Culture