London Trivia: Ronnie and Reggie

On 24 October 1933 East End gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray were born in Hoxton, both later attended Wood Close School, Brick Lane, with their gang, known as “The Firm”, the Krays were involved in murder and armed robbery.

On 24 October 2003 Concorde made its final commercial flight landing at Heathrow, 27 years after its first flight

Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain after being convicted of the murder of her lover, David Blakely, once lived at 44 Egerton Gardens, Ealing

It’s believed as long as there’s ravens at the Tower of London Britain will be safe from invasion a Raven Master still looks after the birds

Owner of the Titanic, Joseph Bruce Ismay, was buried at Putney Vale Cemetery in 1937, 25 years after surviving the disaster

A London by-law of 1351 prohibited boys (girls were presumably exempt) from playing practical jokes on Members of Parliament

The Lanesborough Hotel had three original Reynolds and boasts the largest collection of 18th century paintings in the world outside any gallery

During the Great Exhibition 827,280 male visitors paid 1d each to use the ‘Reading Rooms’, giving rise to the expression ‘to spend a penny’

Sir Jack Hobbs, the first professional cricketer to be knighted, lived at 17 Englewood Road, Clapham, known as ‘The Master’, he is regarded by critics as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket

Heathrow’s Terminal 4 has gates 12 and 14 at opposite ends of the building, so superstitious travellers wouldn’t notice the absence of gate 13

Isaac Newton lived at 87 Jermyn Street, St. James when he worked at the Royal Mint where he was tasked with prosecuting counterfeiters

TV cables at Buckingham Palace were installed by a ferret the narrow underground duct meant luring the animal with bacon whilst attached to a line

CabbieBlog-cab.gifTrivial 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.

5 thoughts on “London Trivia: Ronnie and Reggie”

    1. I had heard about that one. For some reason, I think it was mentioned on Blue Peter. A long time after the cables were installed, I’m sure. Maybe Valerie Singleton was doing a ‘Ferret Feature’? 🙂

      Like

What do you have to say for yourself?

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s