On 9 October 1975 a man, thought to be the bomber died and 20 people were injured, two of them children, by a bomb planted at a bus stop close to Green Park tube station and the Ritz Hotel, Piccadilly.

On 9 October 1991 the first Sumo wrestling tournament ever staged outside Japan in the sport’s 1,500 year history took place at the Royal Albert Hall

Rudolf Hess was the last prisoner to be kept in the Tower of London, in 1941, after the plane he had been flying solo crashed in Scotland

St George the Martyr, Borough has 4 clock faces only 3 are illuminated as the 4th faces Bermondsey who refused to contribute to the funding of the building

A ‘cockney’s luxury’ is the slang term for breakfast in bed, followed by a good defecation in a chamber pot – just saying

In 1815, West Hampstead was such a quiet, rural enclave, that its residents were reported to have heard the cannon fire from the Battle of Waterloo at Brussels

Both Hampstead’s New End Theatre and Knightsbridge’s Pizza On the Park were entertainment venues converted from hospital mortuaries

Opened in 1652, Pasqua Rosee’s was the first coffee house in London. It was located on St Michael’s Alley and burned down during the Great Fire of 1666

London’s oldest surviving sports structure dates from 1534 and is the wall of a tennis court built at Whitehall Palace by Henry VIII, which now forms part of the Cabinet Office, backing onto Downing Street

Five stations on the Underground system are named after pubs: Elephant and Castle, Angel, Swiss Cottage, Royal Oak and Manor House

The first all-British plane was constructed under the viaduct on Walthamstow Marshes in 1909. Alliott Verdon Roe flew for record 280 metres

In 1994 The Stage newspaper advertised for streetwise, outgoing, ambitious girls auditioning at Dreamworks in Mayfair from 400 five became Spice Girls

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 2 October 1909, the first match was held at Twickenham Rugby Ground between Richmond and Harlequins. Twickenham is affectionately known as the ‘cabbage patch’ because the grounds were originally used to grow cabbages.

On 2 October 1899 the first two motorised double-decker buses ran from Victoria to Kennington Park, they were red!

There are five prisons in London and four of them were built by the Victorians (Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth, Pentonville and Brixton). Brixton is the oldest prison in London still in use

It was Lord Byron’s valet – James Brown – who established Brown’s Hotel in 1837. Agatha Christie’s At Bertram’s Hotel is based on Brown’s Hotel

Mayfair’s most eccentric dentist was Martin von Butchell, when his wife, Mary, died in 1775 he had her embalmed and turned her into a visitor attraction to drum up more business

‘So hour by hour, be thou my guide, that by thy power, no step may slide.’ The words to Big Ben’s chimes known as the Westminster Quarters and is the most common clock chime melody

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

The George Inn is a National Trust-owned, medieval pub in Southwark and one of the few Grade I listed public houses in England

For the London 1908 Olympics there was the first purpose-built Olympic swimming pool, at the Paris Olympics of 1900 the competitors had to race through sewage in the River Seine

A spiral escalator was installed in 1907 at Holloway Road station, but linear escalators were favoured for the rest of the network. A small section of the spiral escalator is in the Acton depot

In 1809 as part of a hoax a resident of 54 Berners Street was visited by hundreds of maids requesting jobs and tradesmen delivering goods

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

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 September 1818, James Blundell became the first doctor in the world to perform a transfusion using human blood at Guy’s Hospital, a feat he first experimented with in dogs. He also made advancements in abdominal surgery as well as in surgical strategies for obstetrics and gynaecology.

On 25 September 1066 the Battle of Stamford Bridge marked the end of the Viking era – Oh really!

During World War I a baker on Chapman Street was jailed for 3 days after selling fresh bread, the rationale being fresh bread is difficult to cut thinly, and people would, therefore, consume more if the slices were thick

Fruit Lines Ltd used to own the wharf at Canary Wharf. It was where they imported fruits mainly from the Canary Islands – hence the name

Herts Shenley mental health hospital like many others was once a stately home with a long curved drive hence the term ‘going round the bend’

Conservative MP Sir Henry Bellingham is a direct descendant of John Bellingham the assassin of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval in 1812

Composer Felix Mendelssohn stayed at 4 Hobart Place, Belgravia, whilst staying here he dined with Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Charles Dickens

In 1736 Fortnum and Mason wrapped hard-boiled eggs in sausage meat and breadcrumbs thus creating the Scotch egg

Polo imported in 1870 by cavalry officers serving in India was first played in Britain on Hounslow Heath and then Richmond Park

Finsbury Park station has murals that show a pair of duelling pistols, harking back to a time when men would visit the park after hours to defend their honour

The first parking ticket was issued to Dr Thomas Creighton on his Ford Popular as he attended a heart attack victim (£2 fine – later rescinded)

When John Noakes climbed Nelson’s Column (removing pigeon poo) for Blue Peter a sound engineer didn’t record the stunt Noakes had to reclimb

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 18 September 1970 rock legend Jimi Hendrix, aged 27, died after collapsing at a party, a number of sleeping pills were found. At the inquest, finding no evidence of suicide, and lacking sufficient evidence of the circumstances, recorded an open verdict.

On 18 September 1709 Samuel Johnson was born, his dictionary: Oats a grain in England is given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people

Newgate Prison was renovated with funding provided by London’s famous mayor, Dick Whittington, with a bequest in his will of 1422, the gate and gaol were pulled down and rebuilt

Under Cleopatra’s Needle a time capsule contains cigars, a razor, Queen Victoria’s portrait, newspapers and pictures of 12 English beauties

During the plague a sage said breathing on a chicken for self-diagnosis: if you’re infected the chicken becomes ‘roupy’ and lay rotten eggs

At a Twickenham public park 8 naked ladies disport on fountain rockery so startlingly white during World War II their bums were sprayed grey for the blackout

When Animal Farm was published in 1945 George Orwell was living at 27b Canonbury Square he moved there in the autumn of 1944 after their flat in Kilburn was hit by a  V-1 flying bomb

Tea made its first appearance in London in September 1658, when the new beverage was advertised in a pamphlet by Thomas Garraway, a coffeehouse owner

Griffin Park Brentford FC’s home since 1904 is renowned for being the only English league ground to have a pub on each corner, and the ground is named after one of these

Blackfriars is London’s only station to have entrances on both sides of the Thames, it is world’s largest solar-powered bridge having been covered with 4,400 photovoltaic panels

19th Century ‘pure finders’ wandered London collecting dog faeces required by the many South Bank tanners to purify the leather

Street names that sadly no longer exist include Shiteburn Lane, Pissing Alley, and more than one Gropecunt Lane

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 11 September 1980 the ‘Marlborough Diamond’, totalling 26-carats, was stolen by two Chicago gangsters from the Graff jewellers shop in Knightsbridge. They got away with a total of £1,429,000 worth of gems and were arrested in Chicago as they stepped off the plane. The diamond was never recovered.

On 11 September 1978 Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov died of suspected ricin poisoning, it was suspected that the poison was delivered via the point of an umbrella

The last person to be executed at the Tower of London was German soldier Josef Jakobs in 1941, shot by a military firing squad

Until 1994 there were no ‘roads’ in the City, there’s now one, Goswell Road becoming part of the Square Mile in 1994 after boundary changes

Wyndham’s theatre programme 1940. “In the interests of public health this theatre is disinfected with Jeyes Fluid”

In the Old Red Lion, Islington Thomas Paine wrote The Rights of Man and Lenin eavesdropped on conversations via the dumb waiter lift shaft

Peter Cook lived at 17 Church Row, Hampstead where he regularly entertained friends such as Peter Sellars and Willie Rushton

Due to its status as a fashion Mecca and length, Regent Street is also referred to as the ‘Mile of Style’ as distinct from Oxford Street

The London 2012 Olympics organizers wanted Keith Moon to play at Olympics ceremony. They realized later that he had been dead for 34 years

Don’t believe the signs telling you how many steps there are: at Belsize Park Station the sign says 219 steps, but there are actually 189

In 1812 Bryan Donkin and John Hall set up the world’s first canning factory in Blue Anchor Lane, Bermondsey

Margaret Thatcher went to the same Mayfair hairdresser, Evansky as Barbara Castle, while Thatcher sat in main area Castle had a private room

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.