On 31 December 1853 celebrating the installation of life-sized dinosaur models at Sydenham Park. A 20  strong dinner party was held inside the stomach of the partly completed a concrete iguanodon made by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins of the Crystal Palace Company. The model was surrounded by a tent decorated with a chandelier and four plaques honouring famous palaeontologists. Guests were served by waiters, what was on the menu is unknown.

On the 31 December 1923 the chimes of Big Ben were first broadcast by the BBC and every evening since are transmitted live via a microphone

On 31 December 1919 the first woman law student was admitted to study at Lincoln’s Inn which had been in existence since at least 1422

Westminster Catholic Cathedral, Victoria Street stands on the foundations of Tothill Fields Prison demolished in 1884

In 1952 pollution was so bad a theatre performance at Sadler’s Wells had to be abandoned as smog crept into the auditorium

The Palace of Westminster has 8 bars, 6 restaurants, 1,000 rooms, 100 staircases, 11 courtyards, a hair salon, and rifle-shooting range

The harrowing battle scenes in the last hour of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket were filmed at Beckton Gas a latticework and appropriate advertising hoardings added make it believable

Russian for railway station ‘vokzal’ derives from Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens as its first track went from St. Petersburg to a pleasure garden

Arsenal are the only football team to have a Tube station named after them, called Gillespie Road it was renamed in 1932 when the team went to Highbury

Heathrow Airport is so named because the land it was built on was once a sleepy hamlet called Heath Row

Cock Lane didn’t get its name due to any association with poultry, but because it was the only street to be licensed for prostitution

Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg who lived off Farringdon Road predicted there would be a special part in heaven reserved for the English

Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.

On 24 December 1997 Home Secretary, Jack Straw’s 17-year-old son was given police bail after a Daily Mirror journalist following an anonymous tip-off had met him in a pub and been offered a small chunk of cannabis resin for £10 claiming it was “good strong hash”. The editor of the Mirror had phoned Jack Straw to confront them with the story and the minister apparently insisted that his son received no special privileges.

On 24 December 1832 thirteen-year-old Princess Victoria recorded in her diary at Buckingham Palace ‘we then went into the drawing room . . . on tables were placed two trees hung with lights ad sugar ornaments’

The first man to wear a top hat in public caused so much hysteria and commotion in St. James’ that he was arrested for disturbing the peace

During World War II number 77 Baker Street was requisitioned by the Special Operations Executive, using it as a homing station for message-carrying pigeons

Aldgate tube station is built on the site of a plague pit mentioned by Daniel Defoe in Journal of a Plague Year in which over a thousand were buried

The Penderel Oak, High Holborn is named after yeoman farmer, Richard Penderel, who helped Charles II escape by hiding him in a wood

The opening scene in The Beatles’ movie A Hard Day’s Night was shot at Marylebone Station not Liverpool’s Lime Street as depicted

In the mid-19th century Thomas Barry was famous for sailing between Westminster and Vauxhall Bridges in a tub towed by four geese

Smithfield was once the play area of London, where jousting and tournaments took place, later it would be where William Wallace was hanged, drawn and quartered

The Thames still handles more material by tonnage annually than all of London’s airports combined, the equivalent to 400,000 lorries every year

As a boy Charles Dickens worked in a boot polish or blacking factory on Villiers Street off the Strand. Embankment station now occupies the site

Diarist Samuel Pepys buried his parmesan cheese and wine in his garden to protect them from the Great Fire of London in 1666

Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.