London Trivia: Stone of Scone returned

On 3 July 1996, it was announced in the House of Commons, due in part to the growing dissatisfaction among Scots at the prevailing constitutional settlement, that the Stone of Scone would be returned to Scotland. The handover was made on St Andrew’s Day.

On 3 July 1935 the Geological Museum at South Kensington opened, it was originally derived from a Museum of Economic Geology based in Whitehall

In 1597 Ben Jonson was charged with “Leude and mutynous behavior” and jailed in Marshalsea Prison for co-writing the play, The Isle of Dogs

To allow for high winds the skyscraper One Canada Square (Canary Wharf Tower) is able to sway 13.75 inches

Tomb of poet Edmund Spenser in Westminster Abbey contains unpublished works by admirers possibly Shakespeare who threw poems into his grave

Prior to 1707 Scotland was a foreign country and had an embassy in London. This was on the site of Great Scotland Yard

Manette Street in Soho is named after the character from Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens describes the street having a golden arm

Dando the Notorious Oyster Eater’s trick was eating 30doz oysters a sitting ‘with proportionate quantity of bread, porter, brandy and water’

Millwall Football Club were formed in the summer of 1885 by workers at Morton’s Jam Factory on the Isle of Dogs mostly Scottish hence blue & white colours

There’s only one Tube station that doesn’t have any of the letters from the word mackerel in it: St John’s Wood

Howard House, 14 Fournier Street, Spitalfields is where the silk for Queen Victoria’s coronation gown was woven

The Great Fire of London 1666 raged for 5 days despite Mayor Thomas Bloodworth’s doubts when he declared, “Pish! A woman might piss it out!”

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.

3 thoughts on “London Trivia: Stone of Scone returned”

  1. Millwall was the local football club where I grew up. (After it moved to Cold Blow Lane.) Shame the supporters became so thuggish and racist later on.
    Cheers, Pete.

    Like

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