On 9 March 1950 Timothy Evans (25) was hanged at Pentonville Prison for the murder of his wife, Beryl at 10 Rillington Place. Mentally sub-normal he had, under duress, admitted to the killing, when in fact John Christie had murdered her along with many others. Evans was granted a posthumous pardon in 1966 and Christie was hanged for the crimes on 15 July 1953 by the same executioner who had previously hanged Evans.

On 9 March 1721 English Chancellor Exchequer John Aislabie confined in London Tower for ‘most notorious, dangerous and infamous corruption’ relating to the South Sea Bubble scandal

On 9 March 1966, Ronnie Kray walked into the Blind Beggar public house on Whitechapel Road and shot rival gangster George Cornell through the head

Queen Square, Bloomsbury takes its name from the statute at its centre but no-one knows the sculptor or which queen it is meant to represent

With no flowers Green Park is so named because it was once the burial ground for the leper’s hospital on the site of St. James’s Palace

Jewry Street was originally called Poor Jewry to distinguish the local Jewish community from the richer one round the corner at Old Jewry

Berkeley Square resident The Rt Hon John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-Brabazon was Britain’s first owner of a car painted with metallic paint

The 4th Earl of Sandwich is credited with inventing the snack bearing his name to assist him staying at the gambling tables of White’s Club

Dating from 1879 Fulham Football Club is the oldest professional football club in London, starting out as Fulham St. Andrew’s Church Sunday School F.C.

In 1952 the Reliant Regal the forerunner to Del Boy’s Robin, was banned from the Motor Show as with three wheels it wasn’t regarded as a car

At the end of the 19th century there were 250-300,000 working horses in the capital each producing between 3 and 4 tons of dung a year

Several eminent Victorian engineers favoured a scheme to dam the Thames at Woolwich, thereby producing a vast inner city freshwater lake

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.