On 1 October 1868 one of London’s greatest buildings was opened to little fanfare. George Gilbert Scott’s Gothic masterpiece St. Pancras. Years later it took pressure from a group led by poet laureate John Betjeman to save it from demolition. Betjeman, a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, on the reopening of St Pancras station in 2007, a statue of Betjeman was unveiled.

On 1 October 1985 police in riot gear closed off parts of Peckham in an effort to contain continued outbreaks of violence and vandalism as gangs of youths threw petrol bombs and set shops alight

Robert Peel’s new Metropolitan Police Force nicknamed ‘Blue Devils’ wore blue to avoid confusion with the red coats of the army

St Bartholomew’s Hospital is the oldest hospital in London having been founded in 1123 by a monk named Rahere

Covent Garden is believed to be haunted by the ghost of William Terris who met an untimely death near the station in 1897

In 1966 Russian spy George Blake escaped Wormwood Scrubs and a 42 year stretch by making use of a ladder made of knitting needles

During World War II a branch of the Piccadilly line Holborn/Aldwych was closed and British Museum treasures were stored in the empty spaces

18th century Shepherd Market Mayfair was home to courtesan Kitty Fisher who, insulted by a low value note given for services given, ate it!

West Ham’s I’m forever blowing bubbles was inspired by trialist schoolboy Billy Murray who resembled the boy used to advertise Pears soap

When Paddington Underground Station, as the western terminus of London’s first underground, opened in January 1863 it was called Bishop’s Road

Marc Isambard Brunel came up with his idea on how to dig the Thames’ Tunnel whilst in debtors’ prison watching a shipworm bore through wood

In 1792 Lady Braddock and Mrs Elphinstone duelled Braddock’s hat got shot off and Elphinstone wounded in the arm by a sword – later they had tea

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.

A plaque marks the spot where on 24 September 1917 the old Bedford Hotel stood on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, recording that on the day a 112lb bomb was dropped from a German Gotha in one of London’s first night air raids, killing 13 people and injuring a further 22. The airships were vulnerable to the vagaries of the wind and British fighter aircraft, to counter these the Germans developed powerful twin-engined Gotha bombers.

On 24 September 1842 a bronze statute of the Duke of Wellington astride his horse, Copenhagen was conveyed to Hyde Park Corner

The Boundary Street Estate London’s first council estate was built on the rubble of the Old Nichol, once a notorious criminal area

In 2003 Temple Bar Trust bought the gate for £1 it was returned to London stone by stone and re-erected as an entrance to Paternoster Square

William Blake (who wrote the lyrics to Jerusalem) married Catherine Boucher at St Mary’s, Battersea in 1782

Nancy Astor, the first woman take a seat in Parliament after a by-election in December 1919 and was elected as a Conservative for the Plymouth, once lived at 4 St James’s Square, Westminster

In 1891 Sherlock Holmes creator, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, penned his first 5 short stories at 2 Upper Wimpole Street then known as Devonshire Place

A red, white or black flag was flown outside the Globe in Shakespeare’s time to denote a history, comedy or tragedy

London’s oldest sports building still in use for its original purpose is the Real Tennis Court at Hampton Court Palace, one of its walls dates back to 1625. Today the court is listed Grade I

The Central line introduced the first flat fare when it opened the tuppence fare lasted until the end of June 1907 when a threepenny fare was introduced for longer journeys

Elephant and Castle is named from a pub whose sign was the symbol of the Cutlers who made cutlery with ivory handles

It costs £4 million a year to advertise your firm on Piccadilly Circus’s neon sign which measures 21.1 metres by 4.8 metres

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 September 1091 a tornado which subsequently was estimated at 200 mph badly damaged London Bridge and demolished 600 houses. It laid waste to the church of St. Mary-le-Bow reports stated that four huge rafters were driven deep into the London clay so that only 4ft of their 26ft lengths remained visible. Incredibly, only two deaths are said to have been caused by the event. After the Tornado William II rebuilt the bridge, but a fire destroyed it only 40 years later.

On 17 September 1993 the British National Party won its first seat, lorry driver Derek Beackon beat Labour by 7 votes in Millwall by-election, he held seat for 8 months

After execution at Tyburn Highwayman Jack Sheppard was buried at St-Martin-in-the-Fields in front of 200,000, some protecting his corpse

Kensington Olympia’s Grand Hall famed for its barrel-roof made of iron and glass was the largest building in the country covering 4 acres

Rule, Britannia! composer, Thomas Arne, is buried in St Paul’s, Covent Garden, he also wrote a version of God Save the King, and the song A-Hunting We Will Go

Women’s Rights Campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst once lived at 120 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea it was little more than a rest stop between her numerous countrywide tours for the Women’s Social and Political Union

Wimpole Street was once home to poet Elizabeth Barrett, author Arthur Conan Doyle and Paul McCartney who wrote Yesterday there

The Palace Theatre opened in 1891 as the Royal English Opera House by Richard D’Oyly Carte wanting it to be the home of English grand opera

Old English skittles, once popular in pubs across the South East, is confined to a single alley at the Freemasons’ Arms in Downshire Hill is thought to be played in London and nowhere else

According to Transport for London Underground trains travel a total of 1,735 times around the world (or 90 trips to the moon and back) each year

In the 1800s London prostitutes were sometimes referred to as ‘Fulham virgins’ during this time there were probably about 30,000 street sellers

Kew Gardens holds the largest and most diverse botanical collection in the world, including around 7 million dried plant specimens and a living collection of over 19,000 plant species spanning two sites

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 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.