The rear of the wooden West Tribune Stand collapsed due to heavy rainfall the previous night, causing 25 deaths and more than 500 injuries.

[8][9][10] In the 90th minute, Celtic took a 1–0 lead through Jimmy Johnstone, but in the final moments of the match, Colin Stein scored an equaliser for Rangers.

As thousands of spectators were leaving the ground by stairway 13, it appears that someone may have fallen, causing a massive chain reaction pile-up of people.

The loss included many children, five of whom, Peter Easton, Martin Paton, Mason Phillips, Brian Todd and Douglas Morrison, were schoolmates from the same town of Markinch in Fife.

The 1971 disaster led to a huge redevelopment of Ibrox Park, spearheaded by the then-manager Willie Waddell, who visited Borussia Dortmund's Westfalenstadion for inspiration.

[17] After three years' reconstruction work, with three-quarters of the ground being replaced by modern all-seater stands, Ibrox Park was converted to a 44,000-capacity stadium by 1981.

The Scottish folk singer-songwriter Matt McGinn wrote a song called "The Ibrox Disaster" as a tribute to the people who died in the tragic event.

[19] It lasted seven days, although the jury of four men and three women had been instructed not to make recommendations around safety precautions at football grounds, because an inquiry led by Lord Wheatley would be examining this.

[1] Smith found Rangers guilty on four counts in the case of the death of Charles Dougan, a 31-year-old boilermaker from Clydebank who died, as did 56 others, from traumatic asphyxia.

After hearing of the series of accidents on Stairway 13 including September 1961 when there were 70 people injured and two deaths, September 1967 when eleven people were taken to hospital, and January 1969 when 29 people were injured, Sheriff Irvine Smith stated, So far as the evidence is concerned, the Board never so much as considered that it ought to apply its mind to the question of safety on that particular stairway [...] and would appear – I put it no higher – to have proceeded on the view that if the problem was ignored long enough it would eventually go away [...] Indeed it goes further than this because certain of their actions can only be interpreted as a deliberate and apparently successful attempt to deceive others that they were doing something, when in fact they were doing nothing.In the case of Charles Dougan and a further 60 cases brought by relatives of the dead, Rangers did not dispute the findings of Sheriff Irvine Smith and instead merely disputed the calculation of the damages, as can be seen from the appeal judgement of the Sheriff Principal.