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.
