On 1 June 1571, the first person to be executed on Tyburn Tree was Roman Catholic Dr John Story for refusing to recognise Elizabeth I as England’s Queen. A plaque to the Catholic martyrs executed at Tyburn in the period 1535–1681 is located at 8 Hyde Park Place, the site of Tyburn Convent.

On 1 June 836 Vikings sailed up the Thames to pillage London also in 1915 the first ever German Zeppelin raid bombed the capital

An unrepealed law from 1313 makes it illegal to wear a suit of armour when entering The Houses of Parliament

The oldest apartments in London the Albany, Piccadilly founded in 1770 were until recently bachelor only accommodation and banned women

Measurements of skeletons at Christ Church Spitalfields are shorter on average than their medieval forebears probably caused by pollution

Her Majesty The Queen cannot enter The City of London without first asking permission from The Lord Mayor a ceremony performed at Temple Bar

A series of animal shapes have been highlighted in the London Underground map, first discovered by Paul Middlewick in 1988, created using the tube lines, stations, and junctions on the map

The top 50 tourist attractions in the world six are in London Trafalgar Square is 4th with 15 million visitors a year 44th is the London Eye

Bearing in mind the limited number of words that rhyme with ‘taxi’, users of rhyming slang must have greeted the arrival of Joe Baksi on the boxing scene of the 1940s with great delight

Heathrow Airport was the world’s first international airport to be linked to a city’s underground when the Piccadilly Line connected in 1977

Since 1910 the Goring Hotel has been run by the same family. It was the first in the world with full central heating and en-suite bedrooms

Hampstead Heath, Highgate Wood, Queen’s Park and Epping Forest are actually owned and managed by The Corporation of City of London

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.