ZONE 6 (n.) Hinterland devoid of Hansom cabs and drivers doth willing, by carriage, to transport gentlemen to those lands.
Dr. Johnson’s London Dictionary for publick consumption in the twenty-first century avail yourself on Twitter @JohnsonsLondon
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London in Quotations: William Morris
Forget six counties overhung with smoke, / Forget the snorting and piston stroke, / Forget the spreading of the hideous town; / Think rather of the pack-horse on the down, / And dream of London, small, and white, and clean.
William Morris (1834-1896)
London Trivia: First Punch published
On 17 July 1841, the first edition of Punch appeared under the joint editorship of Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew and Stirling Coyne. A gentleman on an omnibus was seen tossing a copy aside and declaring, ‘One of these ephemeral things they bring out; won’t last a fortnight’.
On 17 July 1895, the Great Wheel built for the Empire of India Exhibition at Earl’s Court was opened to the public on this day and demolished in 1907
‘Monkey Suckers’ perfected the art of drilling into barrels stored at East End docks then using tube to suck out a bottle, or two, of rum
Cheapside get its name from the Saxon word for market – ‘chepe’ as this was London’s main market in medieval times
More than 1,000 bodies are buried underneath Aldgate station, in a plague pit built over 2 weeks in 1665, its location is now Aldgate Underground Station
The last person to be executed at the Tower of London was Josef Jakobs, a German Intelligence agent. He was shot by firing sqaud in 1941
It is probable that Charles Dickens modelled the Cratchit’s house in Camden Town on his first London home at 16 Bayham Street
Samuel Scott’s speciality was to tie a noose around his neck then jump off Waterloo bridge and dance in the air before returning safely, ultimately he didn’t
Fulham FC are the oldest professional football club in London having been derived from St Andrew’s Church team
Farringdon underground station is the only station from which passengers exited en masse on their way to a public hanging
Every July the two companies take part in ‘Swan Upping’ which is the marking and census of all cygnets between Sunbury and Abingdon
In 1949 a flock of starlings landed on the minute hand of Big Ben it put the time back by 4.5 minutes, and snow caused the clock to ring in the New Year 10 minutes late in 1962
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.
Previously Posted: Six degrees of Separation
For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.
Six degrees of Separation (07.07.09)
Six degrees of Separation (also referred to as the “Human Web”) refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth. It was popularised by a play written by John Guare in 1990 and the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game that became popular in the late 1990s. If you shake CabbieBlog by the hand for instance you are but two steps from our Queen.
Let’s try a blatantly self-serving experiment. If the principle of “six degrees of separation” is correct, then it should be possible to spread the news of CabbieBlog to the entire world simply by word of mouse. If each person who saw this site told even just one other person about it, the chain should eventually reach the entire world. Of course, I don’t need or want the whole world to know about this site, just all the English speaking people. If everyone who might enjoy this site found out about it, I could hardly ask for more.
If you were to metaphorically shake CabbieBlog’s and you would only be two degrees of separation from Her Majesty The Queen, as look where that would get you.
