Monthly Archives: March 2020
London in Quotations: Lord Byron
A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping, / Dirty and dusty, but as wide as eye / Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping / In sight, then lost amidst the forestry / Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping / On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy; / A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown / On a fool’s head – and there is London Town.
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
London Trivia: The customer is always right
On 15 March 1909 American retailer, H. Gordon Selfridge opened his new store in the unfashionable west-end of Oxford Street. His newly built department store boasted over half-a-million square feet of retail space. Gordon Selfridge coined two mottos ‘Only – shopping days until Christmas’ and ‘Business as usual’. He would later unsuccessfully attempt to get Bond Street Underground Station renamed Selfridge’s.
On 15 March 1824 the first piles driven in to River Thames of coffer dams for construction of Sir John Rennie’s new London Bridge
Suicides (a crime) used to be buried at crossroads – the last one in London (1823) was outside the garden wall of Buckingham Palace (then House)
The Monument a memorial to the Great Fire, the 202ft pillar designed by Wren is a telescope watch the cam on http://www.themonumentview.net/
Conservative MP Sir Henry Bellingham is a direct descendant of John Bellingham the assassin of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval in 1812
When Julian Assange was holed up at the Ecuadorian Embassy those visiting included Pamela Anderson, Lady Gaga, Eric Cantona and Nigel Farage
On 15 March 1932 Henry Hall and his dance orchestra performed the first musical programme from the new Broadcasting House in Langham Place
The short Holywell Street was the centre for the Victorian gay porn trade, with an estimated 57 pornography shops in as many yards
On Shrove Tuesday charity teams race up and down Dray Walk, Spitalfields flipping pancakes. The winning team receives an engraved frying pan
Edward Johnston designed the typeface for the London Underground in 1916. The design he came up with is still in use today, named Johnson
Following Prince Philip’s declaration that it was unmanly to do so royal footmen at Buckingham Palace no longer powder their hair
M25: 33 junctions; 6 counties; 117 miles, driving at 70 mph without braking it takes 1 hour 40 minutes to complete one lap of the motorway
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.
Protected: Friday the thirteenth
Progressive Toilets
As a frequent user of hotel toilets (thank you very much chaps), I’m getting perplexed at the devices used to save water. The taps have a sensor to turn them on and off, but for some of them you have to wave at the sensor and then get your hands under the flow before the water turns off as the sensor doesn’t scan the washing area. That’s progress?
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