On 6 March 1997 Picasso’s Tête de Femme worth £700,000 was stolen from the Lefevre Gallery in Mayfair, by a man brandishing a sawn-off shotgun. The raid was over in 35 seconds, the thief jumped into a taxi which took him to, of all places, Halford’s in Battersea at which point he made a phone call before travelling on to Wimbledon and evading capture. To the dismay of art lovers, the painting was later recovered.

On 6 March 1961 the image of the capital’s taxi cab as a black Austin FX3 changed as the capital’s first mini cab by Carline Cabs arrived

Among the final few people ever to be imprisoned in the Tower of London were the Kray twins. (Recaptured after deserting from the Army)

Percy Circus, WC1 was named after writer Sydney Smith’s brother Robert Percy Smith who was a director of the New River Company

Charles Dickens nearly became an actor but missed the audition at the Covent Garden theatre due because he had flu

John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the USA, was married in All Hallows by the Tower in 1797, the oldest church in the City of London was founded in 675AD

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

The founder of Soho restaurant Quo Vadis chose the name because he didn’t know whether it would succeed – it means ‘where are you going?’

As the boat race is taking place Spitalfields City Farm raise funds for animal feed by racing 3 goats: ‘Oxford’ and ‘& Cambridge’

Next time you can’t find a bus, try Waterloo Bridge, there, one crosses the Thames every 16 seconds, but very slowly

Edward Garton had an incentive to change the name of his Gartons sauce everyone spelt it backwards and you get snot rag – so HP Sauce it was

On 6 March 1998, the Meteorological Office in Bracknell was rung by a pensioner from Shirley distressed at seeing her garden covered in frogs

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 February 1907 the Old Bailey, at a cost of £392,277 was finally opened by King Edward VII. On top of the 67ft high dome a 12ft gold leaf statue was placed of a ‘lady of justice’ holding a sword in one hand and the scales of justice in the other; she is not, as is conventional with such figures, blindfolded. Over the main entrance to the building figures were placed representing fortitude, the recording angel, and truth.

On 27 February 1557 the first Russian Embassy opened in London, within a year a trade mission brought sable skins opening up trade routes between England and Russia

The Neckinger River and the street get their name from ‘devil’s neckinger’ London slang for a handkerchief or the hangman’s noose

Marble Arch was built as the entrance to Buckingham Palace until it was realised that the arch was too narrow for Queen Victoria’s carriage

At Holy Sepulchre Church lies buried Captain John Smith who was rescued by Pocahontas when he was Governor Virginia, Pocahontas is buried at Gravesend

On 27 February 1975 PC Stephen Tibble, a policeman for only 6 months, was shot in Baron’s Court, hours later London’s first bomb factory was found

The gargoyles on the façade of The Natural History Museum depict the extent of palaeontological knowledge at the time of its construct

Chelsea buns originate from the Bun House which stood on the junction Lower Sloane Street/Pimlico Road and patronised by royalty until 1839

Millwall (Rovers) were formed in the summer of 1885 by workers at Morton’s Jam Factory on the Isle of Dogs

The Austin FX-4 taxi was introduced in 1958 and remained in production until 1996, only the Mini surpasses this record for a British vehicle

The term ‘Black Friday’ was first used in 1866 when the private banking house of Overend, Gurney and Co collapsed causing panic in the City

No throughfare is called a road in the City. Road is a corruption of the word ride and the streets of the City were too narrow for carriages

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 February 1702 William of Orange was riding Sorrel, in Hampton Court Park, the horse stumbled on a molehill and fell throwing the King who broke his collarbone, with fatal consequences. This incident was to give rise to a new Jacobite toast, ‘To the little gentleman in black velvet’. An equestrian statue of William III in St. James’s Square has His Majesty upon Sorrel with the little molehill near the horse’s hooves.

On 20 February 1547 the Coronation of Edward VI took place at Westminster Abbey, he was just nine years old

On 20 February 1965 the crimson backed hardwood ‘Ghost Chair’ at Brompton Oratory Roman Catholic Church was stolen, it would resurface years later in a ruined South American church

César Ritz founded the Carlton Hotel now replaced by New Zealand House in the Haymarket after being sacked from the Savoy

One advantage of motor vehicles replacing the horse was a decrease in typhoid as the great piles of dung disappeared from London’s streets

Winston Churchill, exiled leaders Charles de Gaulle and Jan Masaryk used the Savoy Hotel and Grill as their London home during World War II

Theatre Royal Drury Lane London’s oldest theatre originally a playhouse on the site in 1662 Charles II made them part of the Royal Household

The National Army Museum has the bloodied saw used to remove the Marquess of Anglesey’s leg after being shattered by cannon fire at Waterloo

Wimbledon is now the only Grand Slam tournament still played on natural grass, maintained by 16 ground staff plus 12 during Championships

London’s first mechanically driven taxi was battery powered but slower than their horse-drawn predecessors as a result went bust in 5 years

Willliam Blake’s ‘dark satanic mills’ mentioned in his poem Jerusalem were the Albion Mills near his Lambeth home

When RAC Club’s President, the Duke of Sutherland, had one of his four Rolls-Royces outside the Club its engine was kept running for immediate departure

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 February 1907 with the continuing protests for female emancipation, it had been expected that the King’s Speech would outline giving votes for women. Without that assurance, leaders of the Suffragettes and 400 supporters marched on Parliament only to be confronted by massed police outside Westminster Abbey. Scuffles ensued and 60 were arrested, but several managed to get into the lobby of the Houses of Parliament.

On 13 February 1247 an earthquake was felt in London “. . . which threw downe many of the houses . . and occasioned other considerable damage . . .”

Thames River Police formed by dockland merchants from hired privateers in 1798 to prevent theft is the world’s oldest surviving police force

There are 61 human figures on the Albert Memorial (Albert died 1861); 19 men (born 1819); 42 women (died age 42); 9 animals (had 9 children)

On 13 February 1832 saw the appearance of cholera at London, before it had run its course the disease had claimed some 52,000 lives.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ Communist Manifesto was first published in German in Liverpool Street by German printer J. E. Burghard in 1848

Big Ben chimes in the note of E. So if you play guitar, you can play along by hitting your bottom string open, note that the pitch of the Big Ben is closer to F than E in modern concert pitch

On average the London Eye receives more visitors per year than the Taj Mahal and the Great Pyramids of Giza

Wembley Stadium is the most user-friendly stadium known to man, its 2,618 toilets are more than we will find at any other venue in the world

During the First World War some London buses were modified to transport carrier pigeons and 900 were used to transport troops

Supermodel Kate Moss has been on the London Eye 25 times – the record for a United Kingdom celebrity, no one has asked her. Why?

On steps by the National Gallery are the Imperial measures of length set into granite paving check out length of perch, pole, chain or yard

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 6 February 2007 uniquely in the history of world football, London staged four internationals that night, not one of which involved England. There were 60,000 at the Emirates Stadium for Brazil v. Portugal; 24,500 at Loftus Road for Australia v. Denmark; Craven Cottage hosted South Korea v. Greece, and Griffin Park saw Ghana play Nigeria. An estimated 400 million worldwide watched the matches.

On 6 February 2005 Tony Blair became Labour’s longest serving Prime Minister after 2,838 days in office, in 1997 he became the youngest premier of the 20th century, when he came to power at the age of 43

Wapping High Street is home to the Thames Police, founded in 1798 as the Marine Police, the world’s oldest organised police force

Medieval London’s streets moral impurity was underlined by their names: Codpiece Lane, Sluts’ Hole, Cuckold Court, Whores’ Nest, Maiden Lane

King William III’s statue in St. James’s Square, shows his horse riding over a molehill which caused it to rear and the king fell dying as a result

Bridewell Palace was where in 1528 a papal delegation had preliminary meetings to discuss Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon

A blue plaque commemorates the site of the Tabard Inn, immortalised in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in Talbot Yard, Southwark

Waterstone’s Piccadilly London’s largest bookshop claims to be Europe’s biggest, six floors, over eight miles of shelves, with over 200,000 titles

The Surbiton Club hired a ‘marker’ for its billiard room with an allowance of 18 gallons on beer a month. The first was not surprisingly sacked for drunkenness

The Central Line has the most tube stations with no surface building (Bank, Bethnal Green, Chancery Lane, Gants Hill, Notting Hill Gate)

The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers possesses the world’s oldest collection of clocks and watches, now housed at the Science Museum it possesses some 600 watches, 80 clocks and 25 marine timekeepers

Next time you call someone a ‘right Charlie’ think twice. It’s Rhyming Slang origin is Charlie ‘HUNT’ – so not very polite at all!

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.