On 22 June 1953, Reginald Christie was tried for the murder of his wife at 10 Rillington Place, he had previously admitted to 7 murders, corpses were found in the house, garden and shed.

On 22 June 1814, the first cricket match was played at the new Lord’s cricket ground in St. John’s Wood between Marylebone and Hertfordshire

On 22 June 1535 John Fisher was martyred at the Tower refusing to submit to the Act of Succession his head was displayed on London Bridge

Waterstone’s elegant premises in Piccadilly was the world’s first steel-framed shop built at the time for Simpsons the previous owner

50 Berkeley Square is reported to be the most haunted house in London, the attic room is haunted by a young woman who died there, and a whole range of deaths followed throughout the 19th Century

The Thames is the second oldest geographical name in the country only Kent pre-dates it. Julius Caesar called it Tamesis, no one knows why

Lilian Baylis, the manager of the Old Vic, cooked her meals backstage during the show and the aroma filled the theatre

The Great Eastern Hotel once boasted two Masonic temples, its own railway siding and weekly sea water deliveries for its natural brine baths

Old English skittles, once popular in pubs across the southeast, but now confined to a single alley at the Freemasons’ Arms in Downshire Hill, Hampstead

A taxi rate of a shilling (5p) a mile was established in an Act of 1662 by King Charles II it was not increased until 1950 nearly 300 later

St. Margaret Pattens Church in Rood Lane has a memorial to James Donaldson, a ‘City Garbler’, and a person who specialised in selecting spices

The Japanese term for a business suit is a sebiro, a simple transliteration of Savile Row a street famous for London’s finest tailors

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 15 June 2011 Harrods was sold to the Qataris for a reported £1.5 billion by Mohamed Al Fayed, and started selling superyachts this day. According to The Times, the Mars model retailed at £100 million.

On 15 June 1215 King John’s Magna Carta was signed at Runnymede to limit the power of the monarchy

The narrowest house in London lies next door to Tyburn Convent and was built to block a passage used by grave robbers. It is one metre wide

Holborn Viaduct was built in 1869 to overcome the steep slope on both sides of Farringdon Street and is the world’s first road flyover

At 9 Curzon Place where Cass Elliot of Mamas & Papas died in 1974, Who drummer Keith Moon died from drugs in the same flat – both aged 32

William IV was the last king ever to dismiss his government, although all subsequent monarchs have in principle been free to do so

Harry Potter’s magic luggage trolley sticks out of a wall between platforms 8/9 not 9/10 because J.K.Rowling was thinking of Euston

There are 32 pods on the London Eye, one for every borough, but they’re numbered 1 to 33 – no number 13 for superstitious reasons

In June 1939 92,000 watched the greyhound racing Derby at White City, only football and cinema drew larger audiences during the 1930s

Electric cabs on Victorian streets numbered a mere 19 at the time 10,361 horse drawn cabs plied for hire and continued in service until 1947

Prince Philip who first referred to the Royal Family as “The firm” also described Buckingham Palace as “not ours, it’s a tied cottage”

The last thatched cottage in inner London survived in the Paddington area until 1890s when it was demolished for St. David’s Welsh Church

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 8 June 1968, James Earl Ray was arrested at Heathrow, travelling under an assumed name and false passport, on charges of conspiracy and murder in connection with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. He was later jailed for 99 years.

On 8 June 1925, Noel Coward’s comedy Hay Fever opened, making theatrical history as there were then three Coward plays running concurrently in the West End

At Westminster Abbey traces of skin from a 14th century thief who attempted to steal the church’s valuables are still nailed to a door

Westminster Abbey was built on what was a remote island called Thorney Island situated in the middle of some marshland to the west of London

Dirty Dicks PH comes from dandy Richard Bentley whose house was on the site, on their wedding eve his bride died after which he lived in squalor

Pains Fireworks, still making fireworks, founded in the 15th century in the East End, sold the light gunpowder used in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605

Little St Pauls Cathedral is a sculpture on the side of Vauxhall Bridge and only visible from the River Thames

Henry VIII’s Wine Cellar a 40,000 cu. ft. cavern weighing 800 ton was moved more than 40ft to preserve it during the rebuilding of Whitehall

Tottenham Hotspurs deliberately set Jimmy Greaves’s 1961 transfer fee from AC Milan at £99,999 to avoid putting him under the pressure of being the first £100,000 player

The longest gap between stations is 3.89 miles from Chesham to Chalfont and Latimer; the shortest Covent Garden to Leicester Square 0.25 miles

The Mercers Livery Company is the oldest of London’s Guilds with ordinances dating back to 1347 and are No. 1 in the list of precedence

Estimated distances Bow Bells could be heard from City in olden days (definition of true Cockney) – 6 miles to east, 5 north, 3 south, 4 west

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 June 1571, the first person to be executed on Tyburn Tree was Roman Catholic Dr John Story for refusing to recognise Elizabeth I as England’s Queen. A plaque to the Catholic martyrs executed at Tyburn in the period 1535–1681 is located at 8 Hyde Park Place, the site of Tyburn Convent.

On 1 June 836 Vikings sailed up the Thames to pillage London also in 1915 the first ever German Zeppelin raid bombed the capital

An unrepealed law from 1313 makes it illegal to wear a suit of armour when entering The Houses of Parliament

The oldest apartments in London the Albany, Piccadilly founded in 1770 were until recently bachelor only accommodation and banned women

Measurements of skeletons at Christ Church Spitalfields are shorter on average than their medieval forebears probably caused by pollution

Her Majesty The Queen cannot enter The City of London without first asking permission from The Lord Mayor a ceremony performed at Temple Bar

A series of animal shapes have been highlighted in the London Underground map, first discovered by Paul Middlewick in 1988, created using the tube lines, stations, and junctions on the map

The top 50 tourist attractions in the world six are in London Trafalgar Square is 4th with 15 million visitors a year 44th is the London Eye

Bearing in mind the limited number of words that rhyme with ‘taxi’, users of rhyming slang must have greeted the arrival of Joe Baksi on the boxing scene of the 1940s with great delight

Heathrow Airport was the world’s first international airport to be linked to a city’s underground when the Piccadilly Line connected in 1977

Since 1910 the Goring Hotel has been run by the same family. It was the first in the world with full central heating and en-suite bedrooms

Hampstead Heath, Highgate Wood, Queen’s Park and Epping Forest are actually owned and managed by The Corporation of City of London

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 May 1850, Obaysch the hippopotamus arrived in London, the first since Roman times. He proved very popular and in 1871 fathered London’s Zoo first baby hippo. Obaysch once escaped from captivity and according to legend, a keeper was used as bait to lure him back into his enclosure.

On 25 May 1967 in London John Lennon wheeled out his new psychedelic Phantom, at Rolls Royce they said the £1,000 paint job was unfortunate

Under the 1752 Murder Act: The Company of Surgeons, Barts and St Thomas Hospitals were each entitled to 10 hanged corpses a year

The glazed-iron roof of Royal Albert Hall measures 20,000 sq.ft. and was at the time of building the largest unsupported glass dome in the world

In Westminster Bridge Road is the entrance to an old station from where passengers took their last journey to Brookwood Cemetery

Within 2 years from the start of World War II twenty-six per cent of London’s pets were destroyed, a quarter of a mile queue formed outside a Wood Green vets

The leather for Lady Penelope’s Thunderbirds limousine came from Bridge Weir Leather, the same company that upholsters Parliament’s benches

The short Holywell Street was the centre for the Victorian gay porn trade, with an estimated 57 pornography shops in as many yards

The museum at Lord’s Long Room has a perfume jar containing the original Ashes, and a stuffed sparrow bowled out in 1936 by Jehangir Khan

The longest journey in a car (1988 Volkswagon Scirocco) powered by coffee was from London to Manchester (337km) in March 2010

South Bank’s Anchor Brewery, once the largest brewery in the world, all that remains is the old brewery tap the Anchor Tavern on Park Street

Dukes Hotel, once part of St. James’s Palace, has knee height locks on doors because the staff used to have to enter and exit whilst bowing

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.