On 10 December 1868 the world’s first traffic lights were installed outside the Houses of Parliament. Operated by a policeman they had scarlet-red arms and red and green gas lights for use during nighttime and foggy days, looking much like a railway signal. One night gas escaping into the pillar’s hollow column ignited, killing the policeman operating the device. Traffic lights were put on the back-burner until 1929.

On 10 December 1971 Frank Zappa was hurled from the stage at the Rainbow Theatre by a fan, falling 10ft he walked with a pronounced limp for life

During World War II Diana Milford, then Lady Mosley was locked up in Holloway HMP but in a cottage in the gardens with her husband, Sir Oswald Mosley

London is the greenest city of its size in the world, green space covers almost 47 per cent of Greater London

In December 1817 Captain Bligh from Lambeth was cast adrift from The Bounty by a band of mutineers – his grave is in Lambeth’s Garden Museum

The British Museum’s reading room is where Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital between bouts of getting drunk and asking Friedrich Engels for money

Famously irritable landlord of Coach and Horses, Soho Norman Balon called his memoirs You’re Barred You Bastards: Memoirs of a Soho Publican

The department store that inspired the TV comedy Are You Being Served? was Simpsons of Piccadilly – now the huge Waterstone’s

When Spurs moved to their new ground in 1899 it was almost named Gilpin Park but gradually became known as White Hart Lane

Among the many things Londoners have left on the Tube are a samurai sword, a stuffed puffer fish, a human skull and a coffin

A profitable occupation in London was that of a Lurker who would use their ability to copy another’s handwriting usually to gain favours

Founded in 1826 as London University, University College London was the first university institution in England to be entirely secular

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 3 December 1976 London witnessed proof that pigs really can fly when Algie, a inflatable pig, broke free from his moorings near Battersea Power Station. Algie was being photographed for a forthcoming Pink Floyd Animals album cover. Curiously being near the flight path the Civil Aviation Authority issued a warning that a flying pig had been set loose, the ensuring publicity didn’t do any harm either for Pink Floyd.

On 3 December 1976 an estimated 3 million people applied for the 11,000 available tickets for Abba’s Albert Hall concerts

During the Jack the Ripper investigation the police paid £100 for two tracker bloodhounds but they got lost and needed the police to find them

Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London, is the only European synagogue which has held regular services continuously for over 300 years

In 1829 with London running out of space to bury its dead architect Thomas Wilson proposed a 94 storey pyramid on Primrose Hill to house 5 million corpses

The last execution to take place at the Tower of London was that of German spy Josef Jacobs, shot by firing squad in 1942

In 1747 William Hogarth painted ‘The Stage Coach’ at the former Angel Inn, 1 Islington High Street, rebuilt and now occupied by Co-op Bank

Soho is named after a medeival hunting cry (‘So-Ho’). No unlike Tally-Ho today. Until the late seventeeth century the area was open fields

Charlton means ‘homestead belonging to the churls’. Churls were the lowest rank of freeman during medieval times

In 1878 over 640 died when the crowded pleasure boat Princess Alice collided with the Bywell Castle in the River Thames

John Spilsbury invented the world’s first jigsaw puzzle at his print shop in Russell Court (near Street), Drury Lane, Covent Garden in 1766

Bow Street police light changed from blue to white as colour upset Queen Victoria when visiting Royal Opera House, Albert had died in Blue Room, Windsor

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.