On 16 May 1763 diarist James Boswell met Samuel Johnson in a chance encounter in Davies Bookshop in Covent Garden. Their resulting friendship resulted in Boswell writing The Life of Samuel Johnson, published in 1791, because of the frankness of the writing, incorporating conversations that he had noted down in his diary, it is acknowledge to be one of the greatest biographical work in the English language.

On 16 May 1968 a gas explosion on the 18th floor of Ronan Point kiled 4 and injured 7, the tragedy temporarily stalled the building of high-rise flats

On 16 May 1983 a Mercedes in Sloane Street became the first car in central London to be clamped – the release fee was £19.50

Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate High Street, at 446 feet above sea level, is officially London’s highest theatre

Aldgate Station, on the Circle and Metropolitan Lines, is built on a massive plague pit, where more than 1,000 bodies are buried

The Penderel’s Oak public house, High Holborn is named after yeoman farmer, Richard Penderel, who helped King Charles I escape by hiding him in a wood

The Grade II listed Serpentine Sackler Gallery, in Kensington Gardens, which opened in 2013, was in 1805 originally a gunpowder store

A ‘tolerable Cockney imitation of the seaside’, was how one paper described the artificial beach near Tower Bridge which closed in 1971

London has 13 gold post boxes, commemorating the gold medals awarded in the 2012 Olympics, and 2 celebrating the London Olympics

The busiest station is Oxford Circus at 98 million passengers the Tube’s total carried in 2013/14 was 1.265 billion the world’s 11th highest

The historic Angel Tavern, (now a Co-op Bank), is mentioned in Dickens’ Oliver Twist, was where Thomas Paine began writing The Rights of Man

Whittington Stone on Highgate Hill is a memorial to the famous mayor, a sculpture of his cat is patted by Knowledge students for good luck

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 May 1662, the first performance of a Punch and Judy show at Covent Garden was recorded in Samuel Pepys’s diary entry, it is believed a similar puppet show has been seen there every year since. The original was performed by the Italian puppet showman Pietro Gimonde from Bologna, otherwise known as Signor Bologna and was honoured with a royal command performance by Charles II at Whitehall.

On 9 May 1949 Britain’s first coin-operated launderette, Central Wash, opened for a 6 month trial in Queensway, Bayswater

On 9 May 1726 five men found at Mother Clap’s molly house (“molly” being slang for a gay man at the time) were hanged at Tyburn

The Brick Lane Mosque’s building has also been a protestant church and a synagogue, the only building in the world to have done so

Pugin designed St. Thomas of Canterbury Church on Rylston Road it has Joseph Aloysius Hansom, who invented the Victorian cab in its graveyard

St. Edward’s Crown the centrepiece of a coronation is only ever touched by The Monarch, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Crown Jeweller

It cost a penny to watch the Bard’s plays at the Globe, standing they were called ‘groundlings’, mockingly referred to as ‘penny-stinkers’

On 9 May 1914 William Newell made the first parachute jump in Britain from an aeroplane over Hendon Aerodrome. He survived

Mitcham cricket green is believed to be the oldest in the world continuously used to play the game, it has seen the game played since 1685

Britain’s first ubiquitous speed bumps were installed on Linver Road and Alderville Road, Fulham in 1984, the nightmare had begun

Chancery Lane was previously known as Chaunceleres Lane, and prior to that New Street, it has been home to the legal profession since 1377

The Queen Mother started the enduring royal wedding tradition of leaving the bride’s bouquet on the Abbey’s Tomb of the Unknown Warrior

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.