On 17 August 1896, three imported Roger-Benz vehicles were being exhibited at the Dolphin Terrace, Crystal Palace. Arthur Edsall drove at bewildering speed, 4mph, and erratically knocked down and fatally injured Bridget Driscoll who was attending a Catholic League of the Cross fete with her sixteen-year-old daughter. She was the country’s first fatal car accident victim.

On 17 August 2010 Waterloo Bridge, then known as the ‘Strand Bridge’, was opened. It was pulled down in 1936

HMP Pentonville built in 1842 at a cost £84,186 12s 2d was intended to be a holding prison for convicts awaiting transportation

If London was a country it would be the 8th biggest in Europe in monetary terms and the greenest city of its size in the world with two-thirds covered in green space or water

Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum has a collection of over 45,000 objects including a collection of English delftware drug storage jars amongst which is the oldest known dated piece in the world

Winston Churchill attended the scene of the Siege of Sidney Street and narrowly escaped death when a stray bullet was fired through his hat

A pyramid to cover Trafalgar Square was proposed by Irishman, Colonel Frederick Trench, MP to commemorate the triumph at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805

The Grosvenor Hotel (now Thistle Victoria) was one of the first hotels in London to have a lift called at the time ‘a rising room’

Boxing legend Sir Henry Cooper trained in the gym above the Thomas a Becket pub previously at 320 Old Kent Road, Walworth

The Tube’s world-famous logo, ‘the roundel’ (a red circle crossed by a horizontal blue bar), first appeared in 1908

In 1661 the first postmarks in the world were struck at Post Office Court near to where today’s Bank of England now stands

In 1661 the world’s first postmark was struck at the General Post Office located in Prince’s Street opposite the Bank of England

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.