I don’t know about you, but it always seems to be raining here. It wasn’t so long ago when you could identify a prospective fare from an American tourist due to the light beige raincoat draped over the arm.
So it’s come as a surprise that London is the second driest city in Western Europe. At 21.9 inches of rain a year, just behind Marseille at 20.3, and gratifying way ahead of Paris and Berlin.
Glasgow leads the way when it comes to rain at 44.3 inches a year. Glasgow also leads the way as the least sunny of Europe’s major cities, with an average of just 1,203 hours of sunshine a year, from June to September it receives less sunshine per month than any other European city. London trails along in 4th position with 1,410, even Manchester gets six hours more sunlight a year.
Unsurprisingly London doesn’t come anywhere near the top for the coldest city in Europe but can claim to be one of the hottest. The first four positions have been taken by France: Marseille, Nice, Lyon and Paris, with London at an average of 59.5ºF.
On 29 August 1963, John Fowles complained to his diary that there were no houses available in Hampstead for under £15,000
Shad Thames was known as Jacob’s Island a notoriously dangerous place, featured in Oliver Twist where Bill Sikes meets his end hanging by a rope above Folly Ditch’s mud
The 1.8km long Limehouse Link tunnel cost £293 million to build in 1993, around £163,000 per metre, making it Britain’s most expensive road scheme
Cock Lane opposite Bart’s is where John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, died of a fever in 1688
Catholic monarch Mary Tudor watched Protestant martyrs burn at the stake at Smithfield from the gatehouse of St Bartholomew-the-Great
In An American Werewolf in London (1981) its lycanthropic protagonist, David meets his timely end in Winchester Walk, Borough
The Savoy Hotel’s Chef Escoffier created the dish Peach Melba for opera singer Dame Nellie Melba who was a regular guest
Oldest surviving regular contest in the World Doggett’s Coat and Badge Race rowing up the Thames between two Swan pubs: London Bridge to Chelsea
The London taxi must have a turning circle no more than 25 foot to enable it to U-turn from a cab rank and to complete a single turn outside the Savoy Hotel
The toothbrush was invented in Newgate prison by William Addis in 1770. Inspired by a broom, he inserted bristles into an animal bone
Petticoat Lane is not on any London map as it was renamed Middlesex Street in 1830, though known to Londoners it doesn’t officially exist
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