Law officers edit

• Lord Advocate – William Watson until May; then John McLaren
• Solicitor General for Scotland – John Macdonald; then John Blair Balfour

Judiciary edit

• Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Glencorse
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Moncreiff

• February – telephones introduced in Edinburgh.^[1]
• 27 April – 1880 United Kingdom general election: The Liberal Party defeat the Conservatives by a substantial majority following the 'Midlothian campaign' by William Ewart Gladstone who is returned as Member of Parliament for Midlothian and becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 1 July – the Callander and Oban Railway is opened throughout to Oban.
• October – the SS Ferret is fraudulently chartered at Greenock and taken to Australia.^[2]
• A. & R. Scott of Glasgow begin producing the predecessor of Scott's Porage Oats.^[3]

• 29 March – Bobby Templeton, footballer (died 1919)
• 4 April – William Russell Flint, watercolourist (died 1969)
• 30 April – Charles Exeter Devereux Crombie, cartoonist (died 1967)
• 6 May – Edmund Ironside, British Army officer (died 1959)
• 14 May – B. C. Forbes, financial journalist (died 1954 in the United States)
• 1 July – Noel Skelton, Unionist politician, journalist and intellectual (died 1935)
• 13 August – Mary Macarthur, trade unionist (died 1921)
• September – Peter Kyle, footballer (died 1961)
• 23 September – John Boyd Orr, physician and biologist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (died 1971)
• 15 October – Marie Stopes, author, palaeobotanist, campaigner for women's rights and pioneer in the field of birth control (died 1958)
• 18 October – Alexander Livingstone, Liberal politician (died 1950)
• Margaret McCoubrey, suffragette and pacifist in Belfast (died 1955 in Northern Ireland)
• Dorothy Carleton Smyth, artist and designer (died 1933)
• Preston Watson, aviator (killed in military aviation accident 1915)

• 3 April – John Laing, bibliographer and Free Church minister (born 1809)
• 31 December – John Stenhouse, chemist (born 1809)

• Scottish Grand National first run under this name.
• 1870s Rangers F.C. seasons
• 1879–80 Heart of Midlothian F.C. season
• 1879–80 Hibernian F.C. season
• 1879–80 Scottish Cup
• 1880 Open Championship
• 1880–81 Scottish Cup
• 1880–81 Heart of Midlothian F.C. season
• 1880–81 Hibernian F.C. season

Establishments edit

• Dykehead F.C.
• East Craigie F.C.
• Forth Corinthian Yacht Club
• Parkhead F.C.
• Port Glasgow Athletic F.C.
• Selkirk F.C.
• Strachur and District Shinty Club^{[citation needed]}

• William McGonagall produces his doggerel poem "The Tay Bridge Disaster" to commemorate the previous December's Tay Bridge disaster.

• Timeline of Scottish history
• 1880 in Ireland