On 23 December 1834 architect Joseph Aloysius Hansom registered the design of a ‘Patent Safety Cab’, incorporating larger wheels and a lower axle leading to fewer accidents. It’s the type most associated with Victorian horse drawn cabs, Hansom sold the patent for £10,000 but was never fully paid, only receiving £300 for his ‘time and trouble’, by the century’s end, there were more than 7,000 black cabs bearing his name in London.

On 23 December 1970 The Mousetrap had its 7,511th consecutive performance making a world record for the longest running play

Jack Ketch’s Kitchen was a room at Newgate Prison named after the bungling executioner, here parts of those hung drawn and quartered were kept

The world’s first underground public lavatory opened in 1855 under the pavement next to the Bank of England

London’s smogs came in a variety of colours: black, brown, grey, orange, dark chocolate or bottle green – hence ‘pea soupers’

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Communist Manifesto was first published (in German) in London’s Liverpool Street by the German printer J.E. Burghard in 1848

Next door to the George Inn, Southwark once stood The Tabard which was the pub from which Chaucer’s pilgrims started their walk to Kent in The Canterbury Tales

Between 1879-80 the man who originated the custom of sending Christmas cards, Sir Henry Cole, lived at 3 Elm Row, Hampstead

In the 1908 London Olympic Games marathon Charles Hefferon, with one-and-a-half miles remaining, accepted a victory glass of champagne, the bubbly caused him to vomit, and Hefferon was overtaken

Busking has been licensed on the Tube since 2003, Sting and Paul McCartney are both rumoured to have busked on the Underground in disguise

Established in 1902, Ealing Studios in West London are the oldest continuously working film studios in the world

The word ‘Strand’ is an old English word for ‘shore’. It makes reference to when the Thames was more shallow and more wide, and would have flowed along the side of the Strand

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.

On 16 December 1937 Noel Coward’s Me and My Girl starring Lupino Lane premiered at the Victoria Palace Theatre. It gained popularity when the BBC broadcast it live on radio on 13 January 1938, it was first live broadcast of a performance by the BBC, and listeners could sing along from the theatre featuring what was to become the wartime classic The Lambeth Walk. It ran for 1,646 performances despite being bombed out of two theatres.

On 16 December 1977 the Underground extension to Heathrow was opened by The Queen, making London the world’s first capital with a direct rail link to its airport

The 17th century Seven Dials monument was removed as the thieves and prostitutes used to hang around it. The current replica dates to 1989

There were eight deep-level shelters built under the London Underground in the Second World War. One of them in Stockwell is decorated as a war memorial

Livingstone’s heart was buried under a tree where he died, now the site of the Livingstone Memorial, his remains buried at Westminster Abbey

Only two MPs have run the London Marathon under 3 hours, best Matthew Parris at 2:32.57 in 1985 and Doug Henderson achieved 2:52.24 in 1989

Author A. A. Milne found the original Winnie-the-Pooh for his son Christopher Robin in the Toy Department of Harrod’s on Christmas Eve

Harrod’s opened in 1849 as a single room grocery shop, a fire gutted the building in 1883 and in 1898 installed the world’s first escalator

London has 108 golf courses, to play every hole would require walking just over 300 miles (assuming you kept out of the rough) and crossing a covered reservoir in Honor Oak

During the Second World War, part of the Piccadilly line (Holborn – Aldwych branch), was closed and British Museum treasures were stored in the empty spaces

Billingsgate Market (old) was originally opened in 1016 selling food and wine, with fish becoming the sole trade later

The dog listening to the gramophone in the HMV logo has a road named after him, near his burial site in Kingston on Thames: Nipper Alley

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.