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Events from the year 1917 in Scotland.
Law officers
Judiciary
- 3 January – Ratho rail crash in which North British Railway H class locomotive 874 Dunedin in charge of the Edinburgh to Glasgow express train is in collision with a light engine at Queensferry Junction, leaving 12 people dead and 46 seriously injured. The cause is found to be inadequate signalling procedures.[2]
- 5 January – Stornoway Gazette first published.
- 29 January – Royal Navy steam-powered submarine HMS K13 sinks on trial in the Gare Loch with the loss of 32 men; 48 are rescued.[3]
- 7 February – the Clyde-built Atlantic liner SS California (1907), homeward bound for Glasgow from New York, is torpedoed and sunk by SM U-85 approaching Ireland. 41 are killed but around 162 survivors return to Glasgow.[3]
- 9 April–16 May – Battle of Arras on the Western Front (World War I) – 44 Scottish battalions advance alongside seven Canadian Scottish battalions.
- 1 May – Imperial German Navy Zeppelins L 43 and L 45 conduct reconnaissance patrols over the North Sea off the coast of Scotland, above the Firth of Forth and Aberdeen, respectively.[4]
- 26 June – First branch of the Scottish Women's Rural Institutes founded in Longniddry.[5]
- 9 July – HMS Vanguard is blown apart by an internal explosion at her moorings in Scapa Flow, Orkney, killing an estimated 843 crew with no survivors.[6]
- 2 August – Squadron Commander E.H. Dunning becomes the first pilot to land his aircraft on a ship[7] when he lands his Sopwith Pup on HMS Furious in Scapa Flow but is killed five days later during another landing on the ship.
- 23 August – start of lockout at Pullars dyeing works in Perth.[8]
- October – first North British Railway C Class steam locomotives are allocated for loan to the Royal Engineers' Railway Operating Division on the Western Front.
- 3 December – Strathmore meteorite falls in Perthshire.[9]
- The Great Channel in the Inner Moray Firth is dredged.
- 27 February – George Mitchell, musician, best known for devising The Black and White Minstrel Show (died 2002 in England)
- 15 May – Anna Macleod, biochemist, world's first female professor of brewing and biochemistry (died 2004)
- 18 May – James Donald, actor (died 1993 in England)
- 10 June – Ruari McLean, typographic designer (died 2006)
- 14 August – Donald MacLeod, Seaforth Highlanders pipe major, composer and bagpipe instructor (died 1982)
- 26 September – Phillip Clancey, leading authority on the ornithology of South Africa (died 2001 in South Africa)
- 16 October – Murray MacLehose, Governor of Hong Kong (died 2000)
- 14 December – Alberto Morrocco, artist and teacher (died 1998)
- 31 December – John Fox Watson, footballer (Fulham, Real Madrid, Crystal Palace) (died 1976 in Southend-on-Sea)
- 17 March – Hippolyte Blanc, architect, best known for his church buildings in the Gothic revival style (born 1844)
- 13 May – Benjamin Blyth II, civil engineer (born 1849)
- 22 October – William Hole, English artist, illustrator, etcher and engraver, known for his industrial, historical and biblical scenes (born 1846 in Salisbury)
- 1 December – George Henry Tatham Paton, army captain, posthumous recipient of the Victoria Cross, mortally wounded in action in France (born 1895)
- 27 December – George Diamandy, Romanian revolutionary socialist politician, social scientist, dramatist, journalist, diplomat, archaeologist and landowner, died and buried at sea off Shetland (born 1867 in Romania)
- 17 August – one of English literature's most important and famous meetings takes place when Wilfred Owen introduces himself to fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh.
- November – Glasgow watercolourist Frederick Farrell (who was discharged from army service as a sapper a year earlier on health grounds) serves as a war artist on the Western Front; uniquely sponsored by the city of his birth, the only British city to sponsor a painter.[10]
- Joseph Lee (who is made a prisoner of war later this year) publishes the poetry collection Work-a-Day Warriors.
- Ewart Alan Mackintosh (who is killed on 23 November in the Battle of Cambrai) publishes A Highland Regiment and Other Poems.
- Doric dialect poet and soldier Charles Murray publishes The Sough o' War.
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