Abbottabad – Dale’s Daily Data

Like so many people around the world I was interested to know more about the place where Osama bin Laden had been hiding, apparently for the last six years.  Before Sunday night I bet 99 percent of Americans had never heard of Abbottabad, Pakistan.  It's a city located about an hour's drive north of the Pakastani capital of Islamabad and is well known for it's pleasant weather, institutions of higher education and military training facilities.  Surrounded on all sides by moutains, it's beauty makes it a famous tourist destination.  And now it will forever be known as the hideout of one of the world's most notorious mass murderers.  Abbottabad is named after Major James Abbott who established the town under British rule in 1853.  He wrote a poem called "Abbottabad" where he spoke of the surrounding beauty and of his sadness when he had to leave to return to Britain.  Abbottabad enjoys mild to warm temperatures in the spring and fall, humid weather in the summer and fairly mild winters with occasional snowfall.

Many of Abbottabad's oldest buildings were badly damaged or destroyed in the Kashmir earthquake of 2005.

The world will always be amazed that public enemy number one, the FBI's most wanted man who had such a large bounty on his head was virtually living in luxury in such a picturesque valley of Pakistan.