On 10 August 1675 one of Wren’s many projects, apart from building fifty churches, two theatres and Temple Bar, was also the designing of Flamsteed House, home of the first Greenwich Observatory. King Charles II, a keen astronomer, laid the first stone on this day.

On 10 August 1925 the Maharajah of Patiala took over 35 luxury suites at the Savoy while wearing special underpants costing more than £200

The Blind Beggar was the scene of another gruesome murder when street thief Bulldog Wallis stabbed a man through the eye with an umbrella

Pall Mall was the first street in England to be lit by gas by the splendidly named New Patriotic Imperial and National Light and Gas Company

Bread Street in the City of London, is the birthplace of 17th century English poet John Milton who wrote Paradise Lost

Found in Westminster Abbey after the Queen’s coronation: 3 pearl ropes, 20 brooches, 6 bracelets, a diamond necklace, 20 coronet gold balls

Contrary to popular myth, the statue of Nelson on his column in Trafalgar Square doesn’t have an eye patch

Green Park comes from when Charles II picked a flower giving it to the most beautiful woman, not his wife who ordered all flowers be removed

The Artillery Garden, Finsbury is the oldest venue for archery in the world, Fraternity of St. George 1509 uses traditional longbows

The reason London taxis are so high is so that gentlemen don’t have to remove their top hats, particularly when going to Ascot

Benjamin Franklin invented the lighting conductor and St Paul’s Cathedral was the first public building in the world having it affixed to it

Of the 700,000 dogs in London 10,000 each year end up at Battersea Dogs Home where contrary to urban myth only the old and dangerous are destroyed

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 August 1926, the first traffic lights in London were erected at the junction of Piccadilly and St James’s Street, they were operated manually by policemen in a signal box. There has been a traffic jam there since then.

On 3 August 1856 London got postcodes for the first time with 10 separate districts denoted by the compass points

The 1950’s Teddy Boys (originally ‘Cosh Boys’) were first seen in London, mainly Elephant & Castle, and became Britain’s first youth cult

Bevis Marks synagogue is named from boundary marks of the Bishop of Bury St Edmonds’ house which was here in medieval times

The Old Vic 1937, Lawrence Olivier’s sword broke and hit a member of the audience, who was so startled he promptly had a heart attack

By tradition the Monarch stops at Temple Bar to ask permission of the Lord Mayor to enter The City and to surrender the Sword of State

Jeremy Sandford’s acclaimed 1966 BBC play Cathy Come Home directed by Ken Loach was partly filmed on Popham Street in upmarket Islington

Kettner’s in Romilly Street, Soho was founded in 1867 by German named August Kettner, rumoured to have been Napoleon’s chef

Blackheath is the site of the United Kingdom’s first rugby club, also gave birth to the world’s first hockey clubs, the first golf club south of the Scottish border

The requirement for cabs to have a turning circle of 25ft was instigated as far back as 1906, Nubar Gulbenkian asked why he bought one replied: ‘Because it turns on a sixpence; whatever that is.’

The weathervane on the Royal Exchange in the City is a grasshopper not a cock, the former being the crest of its founder Sir Thomas Gresham

Army barracks near Mill Hill East were named after Lt-Col William Inglis killed in 1811 battle who told his men to “die hard” – hence phrase

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 27 July 1990 Marcel Marceau, the mime artist, proved he was a monologue artist of the first order at a press conference at the Savoy, he spoke for twenty-five minutes then answered twenty-five minutes of questions possibly his last one-man show in London.

On 27 July 2012, the Queen appeared to parachute into the Olympic Stadium in London before declaring the London 2012 Olympic Games open

London’s oldest tree a 2,000 year old yew in St Andrew’s Totteridge churchyard was used as the venue for an early type of magistrate’s court

Covent Garden takes its name from when the area was walled off as a garden for Westminster Abbey and the convent on the site

London’s first pedestrian refuge island was financed by a Colonel Pierpoint stepping back to admire his creation he was knocked down by a cab

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s sermon at Edward VII’s wedding was so boring the orchestra started playing to drown him out

The Duke of Wellington has the unique honour of having two equestrian statutes of him erected in central London

Britain’s first bagel bakery opened in 1855 – it still is open every day of the year 24 hours a day in Brick Lane

Montague Burton set up a chain of shops selling 30/- suits, upper floors were builliard halls for use by customers as they waited for their clothes to be altered

The total number of stations served on the network is 270. Parking your car? The largest car park is at Epping having 599 parking spots

Twining Teas opened 1707 on the Strand selling tea to Queen Anne, it’s the oldest business in Britain operating from their original premises

The former Abbey National Building Society (now Santander) was founded in a Baptist chapel in Abbey Road, St. John’s Wood

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 20 July 1885 at the Anderson’s Hotel, Fleet Street, members of the Football Association accepted a report that stipulated that a footballer who received any remuneration or payment for expenses would have to be termed as a professional.

On 20 July 2014 Shepperton Swan Sanctuary rescued 4 pairs of Canada geese and their offspring from the carriageway at J11 of the M25

The Bishop of Rochester’s cook was boiled alive at Smithfield after poisoning fellow cooks. Boiling was struck off the Statute Book in 1548

The clock known by many as Big Ben completed in 1854 its original 2.5-ton hands had to be remade lighter as the mechanism couldn’t turn them

London’s 1845 International Exhibition saw the world’s first plastic using nitro-cellulose – the product failed as it tended to explode

Sadly for the UK’s richest city, London has the highest proportion of people living below the poverty line than anywhere else in the country

On New Year’s Eve 1853 a dinner was held inside the stomach of a iguanodon being constructed for Dinosaur Park at Crystal Palace

The Savoy was the first hotel with electric lifts known at the time as ascending rooms – it boasted en-suite rooms with hot and cold water

In 2014 the London Playing Fields Foundation reported that 20 per cent of London’s football pitches had been lost over 20 years

During rush hour motor vehicles average speed is 7mph while cyclists maintain 13mph – 15 per cent of Londoners spend over 2 hours commuting each day

Eurostar’s departure lounge has columns that are 3 beer barrels apart as the building was once where beer in transit was stored

Barnet Hill, the hill outside High Barnet Tube station is the one the Grand Old Duke of York marched his men up and down

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 13 July 1911, schoolteacher and suffragette Emily Wilding Davidson was found hiding in the crypt at the Houses of Parliament, this enabled her to declare that her place of abode was the Palace of Westminister in this day’s census. She would later die from injuries sustained after being hit by the King’s horse during the 1913 Derby.

On 13 July 1955 at 9:01am at Holloway HMP Ruth Ellis was the last woman to hanged in Britain, the hanging delayed a minute after a hoax call

In Clink Street is the prison of the same name derived from the French “clenche” meaning catch outside of the door as opposed to the inside

The height of the Monument measures the same as the distance from its base to the place where The Great Fire of London was started

Statistically for some undefined reason would-be suicides prefer to meet their maker from underground stations than from one open to the sky

House near Globe Theatre claims Catherine, Henry VIII’s first Queen sheltered on her first landing in London and Christopher Wren lived there

Senate House on Malet Street in Bloomsbury was George Orwell’s model for the Ministry of Truth in his book 1984

The Guinea Grill in Bruton Street sells over 25,000 steak and kidney pies a year in 2000 it was officially declared Steak Pie of the Century

The home of cricket, Kennington Oval’s distinctive shape was dictated by the layout of the surrounding streets rather than the other way round

In 1928 Hyde Park Corner had more through traffic than any place in the world by 1998 Vauxhall Cross was declared Europe’s busiest junction

Beneath government buildings is a secret wartime complex between Great George Street and King Charles Street are 200 underground offices

Silver Vaults London’s oldest safe deposit assures confidentiality but when flooded one held a pair of knickers labelled “My Life’s Undoing”

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.