On 10 September 1963 the American credit culture hit the streets. American Express arrived, the first credit card was soon to be accepted at nearly 3,000 hotels, restaurants, shops in this country, the Bank of England gave permission for the scheme to go ahead – on condition users do not spend more than £75 on any one item purchased abroad, until then, Amex card holders had been able to use their cards in this country, but only if they could settle their accounts in dollars.

On 10 September 1897 cabbie George Smith crashed into a Bond Street shop and became the first person convicted of drunk-driving, fined £1

Francis Towneley executed for the Jacobite Rising his family stole the head returning to family home and kept it for years in a basket at Towneley Hall

St. Etheldreda’s Church built c.1250 is the oldest Catholic church in England the only surviving building in London dating from this period

According to a 2002 study air quality on the Underground was 73 times worse than at street level, with 20 minutes on the Northern Line having the same effect as smoking a cigarette

Portobello Road takes its name from the 1739 sea battle where the English captured the Portobello naval base in Panama from the Spanish

The “local palais” mentioned in The Kinks’ “Come Dancing” was The Athenaeum, Fortis Green Road replaced by a Sainsbury’s store in 1966

On 10 September 1973 designer Barbara Hulanicki and husband Simon Fitzsimon opened Art Deco department store-Big Biba-on Kensington High Street

Arsenal Station is London’s only station named after a football club originally opened as Gillespie Road in 1906 and renamed Arsenal in 1932

In Central London the deepest station below street level is on the Northern line. It is the DLR concourse at Bank, which is 41.4 metres below ground

Cheapside get its name from the Saxon word for market – ‘chepe’ as this was London’s main market in medieval times

In 1708 Upminster witnessed an experiment by Rev William Derham to calculate the speed of sound, his calculation was only 4.8 per second out

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 September 1878 at about 7.40 pm the largest loss of life on the Thames occurred when the paddle steamer Princess Alice with over 800 day-trippers, mostly women and children, returning from an excursion to Margate was rammed by the collier Bywell Castle many were thrown into the Thames one-hour after the twice-daily release of 75 million gallons of raw sewage from sewer outfalls at Barking and Crossness had occurred, over 650 died.

On 3 September 1939 the first World War II air raid sirens were heard over London just 7 minutes after Britain had declared war on Germany

In 19th-century London, fake ice cream was made from mashed turnip, there is no record of any convictions for its sale

When the statue of Eros, Piccadilly Circus, was put back up after World War II it was erected the wrong way, originally it faced Shaftesbury Avenue

There were claims the first baby born on the Underground was called Thelma Ursula Beatrice Eleanor (so that her initials would have read TUBE) but this story later proved false – her name was Marie Cordery

On 3 September each year members of the Cromwell Association hold a service in front of Oliver Cromwell’s statue outside Parliament

The only true home shared by all four Beatles was a flat at 57 Green Street near Hyde Park, where they lived in the autumn of 1963

In the Mitre Tavern stands the trunk of a cherry tree that once marked the boundary between the Ely Palace estate and London beyond

Pathé News didn’t have rights to 1923 Cup Final – so smuggled camera into Wembley disguised as a large wooden hammer (West Ham one of teams)

The longest distance between stations is on the Metropolitan line from Chesham to Chalfont & Latimer: a total of 3.89 miles

Rotherhithe once known for its shipbuilding industry, in 1620 the Pilgrim Fathers set sail on the Mayflower on the first leg to New England

In the 19th century those said to have enjoyed a Spitalfield’s Breakfast had actually eaten nothing as Spitalfields was an area of poverty

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.