On 6 March 1997 Picasso’s Tête de Femme worth £700,000 was stolen from the Lefevre Gallery in Mayfair, by a man brandishing a sawn-off shotgun. The raid was over in 35 seconds, the thief jumped into a taxi which took him to, of all places, Halford’s in Battersea at which point he made a phone call before travelling on to Wimbledon and evading capture. To the dismay of art lovers, the painting was later recovered.

On 6 March 1961 the image of the capital’s taxi cab as a black Austin FX3 changed as the capital’s first mini cab by Carline Cabs arrived

Among the final few people ever to be imprisoned in the Tower of London were the Kray twins. (Recaptured after deserting from the Army)

Percy Circus, WC1 was named after writer Sydney Smith’s brother Robert Percy Smith who was a director of the New River Company

Charles Dickens nearly became an actor but missed the audition at the Covent Garden theatre due because he had flu

John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the USA, was married in All Hallows by the Tower in 1797, the oldest church in the City of London was founded in 675AD

In 1747 William Hogarth painted The Stage Coach at the former Angel Inn, 1 Islington High Street, rebuilt and occupied by Co-op Bank

The founder of Soho restaurant Quo Vadis chose the name because he didn’t know whether it would succeed – it means ‘where are you going?’

As the boat race is taking place Spitalfields City Farm raise funds for animal feed by racing 3 goats: ‘Oxford’ and ‘& Cambridge’

Next time you can’t find a bus, try Waterloo Bridge, there, one crosses the Thames every 16 seconds, but very slowly

Edward Garton had an incentive to change the name of his Gartons sauce everyone spelt it backwards and you get snot rag – so HP Sauce it was

On 6 March 1998, the Meteorological Office in Bracknell was rung by a pensioner from Shirley distressed at seeing her garden covered in frogs

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.