Aberdeen. Silver City with the Golden Sands, The Granite City, The Jewel of the north-east, Aiberdeen, Aber Daber Deen, Dandy Deen, Aberdream, Sheepside, the Oil/ Energy Capital of Europe…whatever you call the city, it is where many of us have found a home.
The area around Aberdeen has been settled for at least 8,000 years, when prehistoric villages lay around the mouths of the rivers Dee and Don.
Now while this collection of fascinating facts is far from complete or conclusive we’ve compiled a list that will help you in any pub quiz about the City, provide insight into the history of the area and bring a smile to the face of any Aberdonian.
Here’s part 1 and part 2 if you missed them.
34. Aberdeen City and Shire is the home of two of the gold medal winners from the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.
35. The World Champion curler, Jackie Lockhart, is from Stonehaven.
36.Aberdeen Football Club is the only Scottish team to win two European trophies (European Cup winners Cup and European Super Cup, 1983).
37.Donald Coleman invented the dugout at Pittodrie in 1923.
38.Pittodrie Stadium was the first all seater stadium in Scotland.
39.Aberdeen Football Club was founded more than a century ago in 1903.
40.Denis Law, Scotland’s joint top goal scorer, is an Aberdonian.
41.Water polo began around 1863 on the River Dee in Aberdeen, Scotland.
42.Aberdeen City and Shire has 52 golf clubs, one for every week of the year.
43.Lewis Grassic Gibbon, author of the Scottish classic, A Sunset Song, about life in the Mearns countryside, was born in Aberdeenshire.
44. Slains Castle in Cruden Bay was the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
45. Dunnottar Castle near Stonehaven was the location for Zeffirelli’s Hamlet, starring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close.
46.The Press & Journal first appeared in 1747.
It is the world’s third oldest English Language paper and the UK’s best selling regional paper.
47.Prince Charles’ story, the Old Man of Lochnagar, was inspired by the countryside surrounding the Queen’s Scottish home at Balmoral Castle.
48.The film Local Hero was partly filmed in the Aberdeenshire village of Pennan.
49.Robert Burns forefathers are from Mearns – his father William moved from the area to Ayr.
50.Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island while staying in Braemar in the summer of 1881.
51: Lord Byron lived in Aberdeen in his early life.
He lived in Broad Street Aberdeen and went to Aberdeen Grammar School. Named George Gordon Byron after his grandfather, George Gordon of Gight, an Aberdeenshire laird, Byron bore Royal blood, descended through his mother from King James 1. In his epic poem, Dark Lochnagar, he described the ‘steep frowning glories’ of one of Deeside’s most famous mountains.