On 15 April 1984 one of England’s greatest entertainers collapsed and died in front of millions of television viewers. Tommy Cooper was midway through his act televised live from Her Majesty’s Theatre when he grabbed the curtain and collapsed on stage. The audience thinking it was part of his act laughed. He would often hand cabbies an envelope saying cheerily: “Have a drink on me”, inside, they would find a tea-bag.

On 15 April 1936 the swastika-draped coffin of German Ambassador Leopol von Hoesch was driven to Victoria Station while thousands lined the route in silence

St Martin Le Grand maintained right of sanctuary as late as 1697 and became a Mecca for counterfeit jewellers breaking the law with impunity

The 32 capsules on the London Eye are representative of the 32 London boroughs, and each one weighs as much as 1,052,631 old pound coins

Kenneth Williams lived at 8 Marlborough House, Osnaburgh Street until his death on the 15th April 1988 his final note was “Oh, what’s the bloody point”, Rob Brydon later bought the flat

Known formally as The Palace of Westminster, the Houses of Parliament was cited by the river Thames so it could not be totally surrounded by a mob

On 15 April 1755 after 9 years work and payment of 1,500 guineas Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in London

According to the Guinness Book of Records London has the oldest bicycle shop in the world (Pearsons of Sutton, established as a blacksmiths in 1860)

Only 14 men have run each and every one of the 34 London Marathons, one is former head teacher Mike Peace his best time is 2:37.12 in 1991

The lowest number not used by a London bus is 218 all lower numbers may be found but 218, 239 and 278 are the only missing numbers below 300

Peek Frean’s was a popular biscuit brand, known as Biscuit Town its huge factory in Bermondsey claimed to be the world’s biggest

On 15 April 1988 Eliza Sophie Caird (Eliza Doolittle – Missing) was born in Camden her grandmother is Sylvia Young of the Sylvia Young Theatre School

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 8 April 2013 Margaret Thatcher died at her suite in the Ritz Hotel. She may have helped invent soft-serve ice cream, after graduating from Oxford she worked as a research chemist at a Hammersmith food manufacturer J. Lyons and Company and was part of a team tasked with ‘whipping more air into ice cream’. They came up with a kind of ‘soft ice cream’ using fewer ingredients and saved money on production costs.

On 8 April 1989 the longest single movement in Western musical history was performed at the Proms, Odyssey was 96 minutes punctuated by a grandfather’s clock chimes

In 1880 it was suggested redrawing London’s borough boundaries making each one hexagonal to stop cabbies cheating on their fares

Putney Bridge is unique in that it is the only one in Britain with a church at either end (St Mary’s Putney and All Saints Fulham)

On 8 April 1943 author James Herbert was born in the East End. He later went to Columbia Road nursery and Our Lady of the Assumption School

The green cab shelters were erected by Victorian philanthropists with the stipulations that no alcohol to be consumed nor politics discussed

On 8 April 1967 Dagenham’s Sandie Shaw (Sandra Goodrich) became the first UK act to win the Eurovision Song Contest with Puppet on a String

Between 1927 and 39 London boasted no fewer than 27 greyhound tracks. Today only three tracks survive, at Wimbledon, Romford and Crayford

Between 1743 and 1939 with fourteen Islington had the highest concentration of public and private swimming baths ever recorded in Britain

London cabbies are forbidden to transport passengers suffering with a ‘notifiable disease’, bubonic plague is but one disease specified

St. Paul’s Cathedral took so long to build in 17thC London that a lazy worker at the time would be called a St Paul’s workman

The Camberwell Beauty is the colloquial term for Nymphasil antiopa, a velvety, chocolate brown butterfly rarely seen because it migrates annually to Scandanavia from 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.