On 8 January 1806 after laying in state in the Painted Hall at Greenwich Nelson’s body was carried by state barge along the Thames to the Admiralty in Whitehall in preparation for his internment the next day in St. Paul’s. With the commercial value of good viewing places The Times carried advertisements such as ‘Those ladies and gentlemen who are desirous of seeing . . . may be accommodated with seats in a spacious loft, fitted up for the occasion’.

On 8 January 1991 one person died and 542 were injured in a train crash at Cannon Street station. A further passenger died three days later

In 1952 a Nigerian visitor was fined £50 for committing an indecent act with a pigeon in Trafalgar Square and £10 for having it for his tea

On Carting Lane, which runs down from the Strand towards Embankment, there’s a sewer gas destructor lamp hence its nickname of Farting Lane

The worst death toll on the Underground occurred at Bethnal Green Tube tragedy in 1943 when 173 people died. It is the largest loss of life in a single incident

Brompton Road (now disused) on the Piccadilly, Line was apparently used as a control room for anti-aircraft guns during World War II

Scenes from the film Sliding Doors were shot at Waterloo station on the Waterloo and City Line and at Fulham Broadway tube station on the District Lines

The various streets named Savoy take their name from the Savoy Palace where in 1381 thirty-two men trapped in the cellar drank themselves to death

The Lord’s pavilion is only in red terracotta because a strike by masons meant stone, which the architect had wanted was unavailable

The shortest distance between two adjacent stations on the underground is only 260 metres between Leicester Square and Covent Garden and takes about 20 seconds

222 Strand was London’s first air conditioned restaurant, ladies from local cycling club pedalled a bicycle in the basement powering bellows

On 8 January 1938 a German tourist Willie Hitler told journalists that his uncle Adolf was peaceful “who thinks war is not worth the candle”

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 1 January 1845: The suspect for the murder of Sarah Hart using prussic acid boarded the train at Slough bound for Paddington. The nascent telegraph could not send the letter Q. The message describing the suspect read: ” . . . In the garb of a Kwaker“. John Tawell was the first person to be arrested the result of telecommunications technology. Found guilty he was publicly hanged in Aylesbury on 28 March 1845 watched by a huge crowd.

On 1 January 1967 George Harrison recognised by the doorman was barred from Annabel’s for not wearing a tie, he went to Lyons Corner House

The last man in Britain to be hanged for killing a police officer was Guenther Podola at Wandsworth Prison in 1959

The Savoy Hotel has a permanently lit gas lamp near the river entrance powered by methane gas from the sewers

John Keats trained as an apothecary/surgeon at Guy’s hospital but he gave up surgery for a precarious existence as a poet

Number Ten Downing Street has two front doors, rotated to allow maintenance. The zero is at a slight angle to mimic an earlier one that slipped

In 1905 millionaire George Kessler flooded the Savoy’s courtyard to float a gondola, a birthday cake on an elephant’s back and Caruso singing

A stone in the beer garden wall at the Prospect of Whitby, Wapping identifies the wall as the boundary between Wapping and Limehouse

The ‘Ashes’ are displayed at Lords but the cricket match that led to the ashes being presented is played at the Oval

The first commercial flight from Heathrow was made on 1 January 1946 by South American Airways bound for Buenos Aires in a civilian Lancaster

1757 saw publication of Harris’ List of Covent Garden Ladies a directory of prostitutes and their special skills, it was very popular!

In January 2005, in an attempt to alleviate a problem with loitering young people, the London Underground announced it would play classical music at problem stations

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 25 December 1952, the Ambassadors Theatre premiered The Mousetrap, it has by far the longest initial run of any play in history, with its 25,000th performance taking place on 18 November 2012. The play has a twist ending, which the audience are traditionally asked not to reveal after leaving the theatre.

On 25 December 1739 London saw the start of the great frost, freezing of the Thames and a terrible Winter

The City of London police is the smallest territorial police force in the world, as it only covers the Square Mile, although it has nearly 1,000 officers and special constables

The façade of Liberty’s in Regent Street is constructed from the timbers of the navy’s last two wooden warships : HMS Impregnable and HMS Hindustan

St George’s Hospital has a cowhide belonging to Blossom who gave cowpox to Sarah Nelmes in 1796 Jenner developed smallpox vaccine from virus

Playwright George Bernard Shaw served as a St Pancras councillor from 1897 to 1903, during which he worked to establish the first free ladies toilet in the borough

Novelist William Thackeray wrote Vanity Fair, Pendennis and Henry Esmond whilst living at 16 Young Street, Kensington

Henry VIII acquired Hyde Park from the monks of Westminster Abbey in 1536; he and his court were often seen there on horseback hunting deer

Leyton Football Club, claims to be London’s oldest club, Cray Wanderers if not once in Kent founded 1860, could be the earliest

On the Piccadilly line the recording of ‘Mind the GP’ is notable for being the voice of Tim Bentinck, who plays David Archer in Radio 4’s The Archers

In the 18th century a ‘Winchester Goose’ was not an animal. It was the nickname for a prostitute that plied her trade on the south bank of the river

The ‘Dirty Dozen’ is a nickname for a section of 12 Soho streets once used by cab drivers to short cut between Regent Street and Charing Cross

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 18 December 1778, Joseph Grimaldi was born in Clare Market, an area between Strand and Drury Lane, he was to become ‘Joey the Clown’ with the white face. To this day every February, a memorial service is held for Grimaldi, the world’s first modern clown.

On 18 December 1934 infamous Lord Lucan, Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, was born in Marylebone

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 11 December 1936 King Edward VIII explained his decision to abdicate in a radio broadcast in order to marry his mistress, Mrs Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American socialite, the marriage was opposed by the government on religious, legal, political, and moral grounds.

On 11 December 1987 Charlie Chaplin’s cane and bowler hat, used in his iconic films, were sold at Christie’s for £82,500

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.