48 Fun Facts About Sheffield

Sheffield residents were arrested in the 2010s for trying to stop the council removing what from their streets?

Trees were being felled in their thousands under a street-maintenance contract, and a government minister accused the council of 'environmental vandalism' in a city that counts some 4.5 million of them.

Sheffield's Harry Brearley hit on stainless steel in 1913 while trying to make longer-lasting what?

Gun barrels were eroding too quickly for an arms maker, so Brearley tried adding chromium to steel at the Brown Firth laboratories and found an alloy that also refused to rust.

Which 1997 comedy about six jobless Sheffield men forming a striptease act was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar?

The Full Monty won an Oscar for its score. Its actors agreed to strip for real in the final scene on condition that the director filmed it in a single take.

Which sweets from Sheffield's Bassett's were reportedly invented in 1899 when a salesman dropped a tray of samples?

Liquorice Allsorts were a happy accident, the story goes: the jumbled samples so impressed a Leicester shopkeeper that he ordered the mix as it lay, and it became the firm's signature sweet.

Sheffield band Pulp's frontman was detained after invading the stage during whose performance at the 1996 Brit Awards?

Michael Jackson was singing 'Earth Song' surrounded by children when the Pulp singer ran on in protest; police questioned him over an alleged assault on the child performers, and he was never prosecuted.

Which Sheffield-born chemist became the first Briton in space after answering a radio advert?

Helen Sharman, then a chemist at the chocolate maker Mars, answered an advert for an astronaut that promised 'no experience necessary', and was picked from about 13,000 applicants to fly to the Mir space station.

Which Sheffield rock band's drummer, Rick Allen, kept playing after losing an arm in a 1984 crash near the city?

Def Leppard waited for their drummer, who learned to play a customised electronic kit on which pedals under his left foot do the work of the missing arm.

Unlike most Worcestershire sauces, Sheffield's Henderson's Relish is made without which ingredient?

Anchovies go into Lea & Perrins but not Henderson's, which is approved for vegetarians. A London MP who called its look-alike bottle 'parasitic' in Parliament in 2014 was invited to eat his words over a meal with a bottle of it.

Which Sheffield club, founded in 1857, does FIFA recognise as the world's oldest football club?

Sheffield F.C. is six years older than the Football Association itself, yet it now plays in non-league football, far below the two big clubs that the city is known for.

The 1989 Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield struck an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and which club?

Nottingham Forest were the opponents on 15 April 1989, when a crush killed 97 Liverpool supporters in the deadliest disaster in British sporting history; the inquiry that followed made top grounds all-seater.

What nickname, a nod to the city's cutlery trade, do Sheffield United carry?

The Blades was once a name for any Sheffield side, Wednesday included. United began as the Cutlers and took the Blades for their own after their rivals had settled on another name.

Which Sheffield ground staged the world's first floodlit football match, back in 1878?

Bramall Lane tried out electric light on an exhibition game between sides picked as the Reds and the Blues, and is now the oldest ground in the world still staging professional football.

Sheffield United was founded in 1889 by a club that already bore the name and played which sport?

Cricket came first. When Wednesday walked out of the cricket club's ground in a row over money, Sheffield United Cricket Club formed a football side of its own to win back the lost income.

Sheffield Wednesday beat Manchester United in the 1991 League Cup final while playing in which tier?

Second Division Wednesday won 1–0 through John Sheridan under Ron Atkinson, the manager Manchester United had sacked in 1986, and won promotion back to the top flight in the same season.

Sheffield United fans' 'Greasy Chip Butty' chant borrows the tune of which John Denver hit?

Annie's Song, a love ballad Denver wrote for his wife, lends its tune to a list of Sheffield pleasures: Magnet beer, Woodbine cigarettes, snuff and a greasy chip butty.

Sheffield Wednesday's stadium carried which district's name until 1914, when it became Hillsborough?

Owlerton, then a village beyond the city boundary, is also why Sheffield Wednesday are the Owls: the nickname followed the club's move to its new ground there.

Which Canadian made the first maximum 147 break in World Championship history at Sheffield's Crucible in 1983?

Cliff Thorburn began the break with a fluked red, and play on the other table stopped so that his friend and fellow Canadian Bill Werbeniuk could watch him finish it.

Who beat Steve Davis on the final black of the 1985 World Snooker final at Sheffield's Crucible?

Dennis Taylor had trailed 8–0 before winning on the last ball after midnight, watched by 18.5 million people, an audience that set records for BBC2 and for British television at that hour.

Who compiled the fastest maximum break in snooker history, 5 minutes 8 seconds, at Sheffield's Crucible in 1997?

Ronnie O'Sullivan's break was listed for twenty years at 5 minutes 20 seconds, until a 2017 check of the television footage showed the clock had been started too early.

Snooker's World Championship is played at Sheffield's Crucible in front of a crowd of roughly what size?

Just 980 people fit into the Crucible, none of them more than about 20 metres from the table, and a rebuild agreed in 2026 is set to add up to 500 seats.

Which Arctic Monkeys debut single went straight to UK number one in October 2005?

I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor went straight in at number one because fans already knew it: the band had given away demo CDs at gigs, and the songs had been passed around online.

Arctic Monkeys' 2006 track 'Mardy Bum' takes its name from a northern English dialect word meaning what?

Sulky or moody is what 'mardy' means across the North and Midlands; the word probably began as 'marred', in the sense of a spoilt child.

Arctic Monkeys' debut album title quotes which Alan Sillitoe novel, filmed in 1960 with Albert Finney?

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning has its factory-worker hero say the line that became the title, and Alex Turner said the book's own name fitted an album about nights out and mornings after.

Which 1995 Pulp single about a Greek art student at Saint Martin's reached number two in the UK chart?

Common People's heroine has never been confirmed, but in 2015 an Athens newspaper suggested she was Danae Stratou, a former Saint Martin's student married to Greece's finance minister of the day.

Which Sheffield synth-pop band's 'Don't You Want Me' held the UK number one for five weeks over Christmas 1981?

The Human League found its two singers when Phil Oakey spotted teenagers Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley dancing at the Crazy Daisy club on Sheffield's High Street.

Which Sheffield-born former gas fitter took 'With a Little Help from My Friends' to UK number one in 1968?

Joe Cocker rebuilt the Beatles' sing-along as a slow, howling soul number, and sang it at Woodstock the following summer with the screams and flailing arms that became his trademark.

Richard Hawley's Mercury-nominated album Coles Corner is named after a Sheffield lovers' meeting spot outside what?

A department store, Cole Brothers, gave the corner its name; the shop moved away in 1963, but the name outlived it, and a plaque now marks the spot.

Which 1984 BBC film written by Barry Hines follows two Sheffield families through a nuclear attack and its aftermath?

Threads grew out of its director's earlier documentary A Guide to Armageddon, and went out a year before the BBC finally showed The War Game, a nuclear film it had shelved since the 1960s.

Which Sheffield-born actor played Boromir in The Lord of the Rings and Ned Stark in Game of Thrones?

Sean Bean, a devoted Sheffield United supporter, got to play for the club on screen in the 1996 film When Saturday Comes, as a brewery worker scouted by the team.

Which member of the Python comedy team was born in Ranmoor, Sheffield, in 1943 and attended Birkdale School?

Michael Palin went from Birkdale to Shrewsbury School, as his father had, and then to Oxford, where he met Terry Jones and began the writing partnership that led to Python.

Which heptathlete, born in Sheffield in 1986, won Olympic gold at the London 2012 Games?

Jessica Ennis-Hill took gold on the night Britain also won the men's long jump and 10,000 metres, and Sheffield United briefly renamed a stand at their ground after her.

Which Sheffield-born England goalkeeper started every game of the 1966 World Cup win?

Gordon Banks had been a coal bagger and a hod carrier before Chesterfield spotted him in goal for a local amateur side, and his 1970 stop from Pelé's header is often cited as the greatest save ever made.

Which Sheffield-born defender became the world's most expensive when Manchester United paid £80 million in 2019?

Harry Maguire came through Sheffield United's youth ranks, and within six months of the record move Manchester United had made him club captain.

Which Sheffield boxer from Brendan Ingle's Wincobank gym won the WBO featherweight belt by stopping Steve Robinson?

Naseem Hamed, Prince Naseem to his fans, was 21 when he took the title; he defended it fifteen times and once arrived at the ring on a flying carpet.

Which sport do the Sheffield Steelers, Elite League champions in 2024, play at the city's arena?

Ice hockey was an amateur affair in Sheffield until the Steelers were created in 1991 to fill the arena built for that year's World Student Games; the 2024 title was their first since 2016.

Which of Sheffield's rivers runs out of sight in culverts beneath the city centre before it meets the Don?

The Sheaf gave Sheffield its name, yet the city buried it: the river runs through culverts under the centre, where the Porter Brook joins it beneath the railway station.

Sheffield's Meadowhall shopping centre, opened in 1990, was built on the site of what?

A steelworks, Hadfields' East Hecla plant, gave way to what was briefly Britain's second-largest shopping centre, with 1.5 million square feet of floor space.

Which Sheffield housing estate carries the bridge graffiti 'I love you will u marry me'?

Park Hill's message was sprayed in 2001 by Jason Lowe as a proposal to his girlfriend Clare Middleton; the estate's developers later lit the words in neon, and it became a symbol of the city.

The Arts Tower at the University of Sheffield houses the UK's largest surviving example of which kind of lift?

Paternoster cars travel in a loop that never stops, and riders step on and off as they pass; the name, Latin for 'Our Father', likens the chain of cars to a string of rosary beads.

Which biochemist, a refugee from Nazi Germany, worked out the citric acid cycle at the University of Sheffield?

Hans Krebs was forced out of his German post in 1933 and reached Sheffield two years later; when he worked out the cycle in 1937, the journal Nature turned his paper down for lack of space.

Which Sheffield-born politician, blind from birth, led the city council in the 1980s and served as Home Secretary?

David Blunkett's council flew the red flag on May Day and declared the city a nuclear-free zone, and a Conservative jibe, 'the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire', became a badge its targets happily wore.

Which Deputy Prime Minister was MP for Sheffield Hallam from 2005 until Labour's Jared O'Mara unseated him in 2017?

Nick Clegg led the Liberal Democrats into coalition with David Cameron in 2010, and a year after losing the seat he joined Facebook as its head of global affairs.

What caused the Great Sheffield Flood of 1864, which killed at least 240 people?

A dam bursting at Dale Dyke emptied a new reservoir into the valley just before midnight; hours earlier a workman had spotted a crack in the embankment barely wide enough for a penknife.

Thomas Boulsover's 1740s Sheffield plate fused a thin layer of silver onto which cheaper metal?

Copper fused with silver, the story goes, when Boulsover overheated a knife handle he was mending; what he certainly found was that the bonded metals could then be rolled out together like one.

Which Doncaster clockmaker perfected cast steel in clay pots at Handsworth, near Sheffield, in the 1740s?

Benjamin Huntsman's cast steel was so hard that Sheffield's cutlers at first refused to buy it, and for years he exported his whole output to France.

Which 14th-century poet showed Sheffield knives were already famous by arming a miller with a 'Sheffeld thwitel'?

Geoffrey Chaucer gives the miller in The Reeve's Tale a 'Sheffeld thwitel', a knife carried in his hose, so the town's name already stood for knives when The Canterbury Tales was written.

Which double Olympic 1500m champion grew up in Sheffield, where he attended Tapton School?

Sebastian Coe and his rival Steve Ovett each won the other's speciality in Moscow in 1980: Ovett took the 800 metres and Coe the 1500, the distance at which Ovett had been unbeaten for three years.

Which Sheffield synth group, formed by Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh in 1980, took its name from A Clockwork Orange?

Heaven 17 borrowed the name of a fictional chart band in Anthony Burgess's novel, and reached number two in 1983 with 'Temptation' after Ware and Marsh split from Phil Oakey.