On 29 July 1981 Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul’s Cathedral, 600,000 filled the streets to catch a glimpse of the couple, while the televised nuptials reached an estimated global audience of 750 million, making it the most popular programme ever broadcast. Brian Johnston commentated: “Here they come, down the pavilion st- . . . the cathedral steps.” The UK had a national holiday on that day to mark the wedding.

On 29 July 1972 Screaming Lord Sutch was arrested in London after getting off a bus in Downing Street accompanied by 4 naked women

The original medieval London Bridge in use for more than 600 years featured heads of criminals displayed on spikes for more than half of that time

The Metropolitan Police’s iconic revolving sign ‘New Scotland Yard’ once on Broadway performed over 14,000 revolutions every day

Kenneth Grahame author of The Wind in The Willows and secretary of the Bank of England was shot at in the bank by a deranged George Robinson

Big Ben is the bell, not the clock tower, now renamed Elizabeth Tower in honour of the Queen. Its chime is in the key of E

Harry Secombe, Spike Milligan and Michael Bentine once shared a small flat at 13 Linden Gardens, Notting Hill

French Ordinary Court EC3 takes it’s name from a fixed price menu or as Samuel Pepys called it a French Ordinary

On 29 July 1948 King George VI opened the 14th modern Olympic games in London, the first Summer Olympics to be held since 1936

Only two Tube stations have all five vowels in their name: South Ealing and Mansion House and more than half of the London Underground network in fact runs above ground

Old Billingsgate Market was originally opened in 1016 selling food and wine, with fish becoming the sole trade later

Princess Diana’s first owned apartment was at Coleherne Court, Earls Court given to her as an 18th birthday present

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 22 July 1965 the Rolling Stones were at it agin. Appearing before East Ham Magistrate’s Court charged with insulting behavious after urinating on the wall of a petrol station when refused entry to use the toilet. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Bill Wyman were each fined £5. The incident had occurred on 18 March with the petrol station attendant Charles Keeley describing Wyman as “a shaggy-haired monster wearing dark glasses”.

On 22 July 2005 Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police at Stockwell Station mistaken for a suicide bomber

London gangster Charlie Richardson claimed to have help bug Harold Wilson’s Downing Street phones for South African intelligence agency

Clerkenwell is named after the ‘Clerk’s Well’ that supplied Charterhouse. It can be seen through the window of Well Court, Farringdon Lane

There was a public latrine on Old London Bridge that plopped directly into the Thames, providing boatmen with a fresh source of worry

Voltaire, Edgar Allen Poe, Ho Chi Minh, Mahatma Gandhi, Vincent Van Gogh, Sigmund Freud, and Hiter’s older half-brother all lived in London

London’s home to the world’s largest block of acrylic by Tower Hotel it’s a 1-tonne cuboid reject for 2001: A Space Odyssey – black was used

Zog self-proclaimed King of Albania, fled to London when Mussolini invaded with his country’s gold. Booked into the Ritz and paid in bullion

London’s oldest sports building still in use for its original purpose is the Real Tennis Court at Hampton Court Palace, one of its walls dates back to 1625

On the eastbound platform a roundel still reads St. James’ Park, the rest have the current spelling and punctuation, St. James’s Park

The Queen’s Remembrancer the oldest legal post presides over the Trial of the Pyx where 26 gold smiths are sworn in to weigh Royal Mint coins

It’s an odd coincidence at £4m modern London Bridge cost the same as buying, transporting and re-erecting the old bridge at Lake Havasu, USA

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.