On 16 June 1824, shrugging off the irony in the name of their chosen meeting place, animal welfare campaigners, MPs Richard Martin and William Wilberforce, met with their supporters at Old Slaughter’s Coffee House to establish a ground-breaking new organisation. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) would become the world’s oldest animal welfare charity. In 1840 Queen Victoria gave it a Royal ‘R’.

On 16 June 1667 gold was buried in Cambridge by Samuel Pepy’s wife which had been smuggled out of London fearing the Dutch Navy were on the point of sailing up the Thames to seize London

Mount Pleasant PO is on the site of Coldbath Fields Prison which forbade inmates from speaking and made them spend hours on the treadmill

The pillars in the basement of St. Pancras Station are spaced exactly 3 beer barrels apart designed as Bass beer arrives from Midlands

The playwright Ben Jonson was buried standing up in Westminster Abbey – at his own request, saying he was too poor to take up more space

Conservative MP Sir Henry Bellingham is a direct descendant of John Bellingham the assassin of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval in 1812

Leicester Square was where Maurice Micklewhite saw poster for The Caine Mutiny and chose Michael Caine as new name

Westfield Stratford, the largest shopping centre in Europe, cost the equivalent of the GDP of the 25 world’s poorest countries to build

Harold Thornton invented table football in 1922 attempting to recreate Spurs with a box of matches, he played it at Bar Kick, Shoreditch High Street

The tunnel between East Finchley and Morden (via Bank) is the longest on the Underground measuring 27.8km (17.25 miles)

The Company of Watermen and Lightermen are not a full Livery Company – excluded because they charged people fleeing the Great Fire in 1666

Rosewood Hotel’s Manor House Suite is the only hotel suite in the world with its own postcode: WC1V 7DZ for the rest of the hotel: WC1V 7EN

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 9 June 1975 in a 4-week experiment, the first live transmission was broadcast of Parliament by BBC Radio. Secretary of State for Industry Tony Benn was the first minister to be questioned in Parliament live on air, starting a debate which some listeners said was difficult to follow on radio. The idea of broadcasting the proceedings of Parliament was first suggested in the 1920s, but permission was refused.

On 9 June 1978 a Gutenberg Bible (1 of 21) was sold in London for $2.4 million. It now resides in Stuttgart and worth £30 million

Section 54 of The Metropolitan Police Act 1839 makes it an offence to carry a plank across the pavement in London. Maximum fine £500

Southwark Street laid out in 1862 by Sir Joseph Bazalgette was the first street in London with water and gas pipes in the middle of the road

Famous cook ‘Mrs Beeton’ who published The Book of Household Management, was born at 24 Milk Street, off Cheapside as Isabella Mayson

In 1940 Winston Churchill met at St. Ermin’s Hotel promising to ‘Set Europe Ablaze’ the genesis of the SOE which ultimately became the SAS

The stage version of Susan Hill’s novel The Woman In Black is the second-longest running West End show after Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap

The Sun and 13 Cantons in Soho is named after the 13 provinces (cantons) of Switzerland (streets around pub were once big watch-making area)

On 9 June 1905 Charlton Athletic Football Club was formed by a group of teenagers on East Street (later known as Eastmoor Street)

On 9 June 1958 The Queen opened revamped Gatwick Airport, arriving by air from Heathrow. The government had decreed that Gatwick should be London’s second airport, it had been closed for the major re-development

Twinings tea shop on the Strand has an old money chest in its in-store museum with the letters ‘T.I.P.’ short for ‘To Improve Promptness’

Some of the TV cables at Buckingham Palace for the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer were installed by a ferret

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.