On 31 August 1854 a severe outbreak of cholera started at Broad Street, Soho, by the end 616 people had died. Dr John Snow deduced that the cause was contaminated water from the pump. A replica pump is to be found near the site of the original in Broadwick Street.

On 31 August 1888 Mary Ann Nichols’ body was found in Buck’s Row, she was Jack in Ripper’s first victim

Buckingham House built 1702 which would later become Buckingham Palace was built on the site of a notorious brothel

A ‘tot’ was an artificial Celtic beacon hill arranged along solstice lines London’s most famous tot hill was Westminster hence Fields and Street

Richard the Lionheart’s heart is believed to be buried in the churchyard of All Hallows by the Tower, beneath a demolished chapel

Pear Tree Court on Lunham Road has an 18-room nuclear bunker in the basement, now closed as Lambeth declared the borough nuclear free

165 Broadhurst Gardens was home to Decca Records until the early 1980s, on 1 January 1962, Brian Epstein paid for an hour audition for The Beatles, but they were turned down by Decca

Bleeding Heart Yard is almost certainly derived from an ancient religious symbol later adopted by a tavern which once stood on the site

The footbridge outside Wembley Stadium is named White Horse Bridge after the police horse who controlled the 1923 FA Cup Final

Building the tunnels for the first section of the District Line (South Kensington to Westminster, 1868) used 140 million bricks

Until Edward VIII changed the rules in 1936, Beefeaters at The Tower of London were required to sport a beard

Dulwich College founded in 17th century by actor Edward Alleyn has famous alumni including PG Wodehouse and Ernest Shackleton

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 24 August 1795 the Revd Samuel Henshall, later vicar of St. Mary-le-Bow, was granted patent number 2061 for the first corkscrew, with a button on top to break any residual bond between cork and bottle-top.

On 24 August 1967 two penguins from Chessington Zoo were taken on a day trip to Streatham ice-rink to cool off as temperatures reached 80F

Transport for London Byelaw 10(2): No person shall enter through any train door until any person leaving by that door has passed through it!

Once Britain’s largest enclosed space, if measured, the air within the Albert Hall would weigh in at over 30 tons

John St. John Long appeared at the Old Bailey on a charge of manslaughter, his victim dosing on his medicated vapours, he paid the £13,000 fine from his vast wealth accululated from selling quack remedies

The Dorchester was seen as safe during the Blitz it is built using 2,000 miles of steel rods, a host of political and military luminaries chose it as their London residence

St. George Church, Mayfair designed by John James, one of Sir Christopher Wren’s assistants, when completed in 1725 was the first church in London to be built with a portico

There are three tube stations on the Monopoly board: Liverpool Street Station, King’s Cross and Marylebone

The foppish son and heir apparent of King George II died in Leicester House as a result of being struck in the throat with a cricket ball

Underground’s longest tunnel is from East Finchley to Morden totalling 17.3 miles but only 45 per cent of the network is actually in tunnels

The Daily Courant was London’s original newspaper first published in 1792 near Ludgate Circus, consisting of a single page, with advertisements on the reverse side

The Constable of The Tower of London can extract a barrel of rum from any naval vessel plying the Thames

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 17 August 1896, three imported Roger-Benz vehicles were being exhibited at the Dolphin Terrace, Crystal Palace. Arthur Edsall drove at bewildering speed, 4mph, and erratically knocked down and fatally injured Bridget Driscoll who was attending a Catholic League of the Cross fete with her sixteen-year-old daughter. She was the country’s first fatal car accident victim.

On 17 August 2010 Waterloo Bridge, then known as the ‘Strand Bridge’, was opened. It was pulled down in 1936

HMP Pentonville built in 1842 at a cost £84,186 12s 2d was intended to be a holding prison for convicts awaiting transportation

If London was a country it would be the 8th biggest in Europe in monetary terms and the greenest city of its size in the world with two-thirds covered in green space or water

Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum has a collection of over 45,000 objects including a collection of English delftware drug storage jars amongst which is the oldest known dated piece in the world

Winston Churchill attended the scene of the Siege of Sidney Street and narrowly escaped death when a stray bullet was fired through his hat

A pyramid to cover Trafalgar Square was proposed by Irishman, Colonel Frederick Trench, MP to commemorate the triumph at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805

The Grosvenor Hotel (now Thistle Victoria) was one of the first hotels in London to have a lift called at the time ‘a rising room’

Boxing legend Sir Henry Cooper trained in the gym above the Thomas a Becket pub previously at 320 Old Kent Road, Walworth

The Tube’s world-famous logo, ‘the roundel’ (a red circle crossed by a horizontal blue bar), first appeared in 1908

In 1661 the first postmarks in the world were struck at Post Office Court near to where today’s Bank of England now stands

In 1661 the world’s first postmark was struck at the General Post Office located in Prince’s Street opposite the Bank of England

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 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.