2004 in Scotland
Events from the year 2004 in Scotland.Incumbents
January
- January – a 428 million-year-old fossil Pneumodesmus found at Stonehaven is identified as the world's oldest-known creature to have lived on land.
February
- 16 February – Edwin Morgan becomes Scotland's first ever official national poet, The Scots Makar, appointed by the Scottish Parliament.
March
- 16 March – Fifteen-year-old Kriss Donald is abducted, tortured and murdered by a Pakistani gang in a racially motivated attack in Glasgow.
May
- 9 May – "Loch Fyne accord": an informal discussion in the car park of the Loch Fyne Oyster Bar near Cairndow between John Prescott and Gordon Brown is supposed to have agreed the latter's succession to Tony Blair as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- 11 May – Stockline Plastics factory explosion: four people die in an explosion at a factory in Glasgow.
- May – "The Bruce Tree" at Strathleven in West Dunbartonshire, an oak once in the ownership of Robert the Bruce, falls as a result of arson.
June
- 6 June – Sixtieth anniversary of D-Day. Last minute pressure forces First Minister of Scotland Jack McConnell to attend commemorations.
July
- 22 July – The Scottish Parliament Act, which breaks the link between the number of Scottish MPs and the number of MSPs, receives Royal Assent.
August
- 18 August – Landslide in Glen Ogle.
September
- 3 September – Alex Salmond wins the Scottish National Party leadership election, succeeding John Swinney
October
- 9 October – Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh, designed by Enric Miralles, is formally opened.
- 17 October – Three men are murdered in a flat in Crosshill, Glasgow by Edith McAlinden along with her seventeen-year-old son and his friend. The crime is dubbed "The House of Blood murders".
November
- 18 November – Daanish Zahid becomes the first person to be convicted of racially motivated murder in Scotland, for killing Kriss Donald.
Births
- Full date unknown – Jack Henderson, artist and charity fundraiser
Deaths
- 27 January – Rikki Fulton, comedian
- 1 February – Ally MacLeod, former manager of the Scotland national football team
- 26 February – Russell Hunter, actor
- 9 March – Alexander Goudie, painter
The arts
- 26 January – serialisation of Alexander McCall Smith's novel 44 Scotland Street, set in Edinburgh, begins in The Scotsman.
- Summer – first East Neuk Festival.
- 28 September – publication of Alexander McCall Smith's novel The Sunday Philosophy Club set in Edinburgh.
- Edinburgh becomes UNESCO's first City of Literature.
