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.

On 30 January 1969, the Beatles played their last ever gig. On the roof of Apple Records Office at 3 Savile Row, they played for 42 minutes to the delight of fans. It was then that the police stopped the performance following complaints from neighbouring offices. The police didn’t have to travel far as Savile Row police station almost opposite. Footage from the performance was later used in the documentary film Let It Be.

On 30 January 1965 Sir Winston Churchill was buried after a full state funeral. A total of 321,360 people had filed past the catafalque during the three days of lying-in-state

48 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea was home to Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull in May 1969 when the police raided the house for drugs

Kensington and Chelsea is London’s smallest borough by area, at 4.7 square miles (12.2 sq km), but probably the richest

The 1887 Coroners Act made it illegal to drop dead within The Palace of Westminster or any of The Queen’s Palaces

On 30 January 1649 King Charles I en route to execution at Whitehall wore two shirts so bystanders wouldn’t think he was shivering through fear

Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis and Demi Moore’s restaurant Planet Hollywood appeared in the British romantic comedy About the Boy

Rules has served food on the same site since 1798 and once had a secret door for King Edward VII to enter with his mistress Lily Langtry

The snow season in London can be said to start in December, however on 2 June 1975 snow fell on Lord’s Cricket Ground

In 1750 the first umbrella used by Jonas Hanway brought back from Persia. Cabbies fearful they’d lose their wet weather called him a Frenchman

Taking 35 years to complete St Paul’s cost a staggering £747,661.50 to build at a time when a labourer building it would be paid 10p a day

Camden painted yellow outlines of squatting dogs with arrows on its pavements telling dogs to use the gutter it’s not clear they understood

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 23 January 1909 two anarchist Latvian immigrants snatched the wages from a factory in Tottenham, making their escape using first a tram, then a milk float and finally a greengrocers van, but could not force the horse into more than the slowest of ambles because they had omitted to release the brake, they killed PC William Tyler and 10-year-old Ralph Joscelyne. The robbers shot themselves rather than face the hangman.

On 23 January 1552 the 2nd version of Book of Common Prayer became mandatory in England, the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI, more radical than the first, was authorised by a second Uniformity Act

It is illegal in London to impersonate a Chelsea pensioner – the offence is still theoretically punishable by death

On 23 January 1571 The Royal Exchange was opened by Elizabeth I who awarded the building its royal title and license to sell alcohol

When King George VI died in 1952 the code ‘Hyde Park Corner’ was used to inform the Government of his death

On 23 January 1985 the proceedings of the House of Lords were televised for the first time – as with nowadays not many tuned in to watch

Established in 1902, Ealing Studios in West London are the oldest continuously working film studios in the world

Almost every day at exactly one o’clock Oscar Wilde would sit down to lunch at the lavish Cafe Royal, 68 Regent Street

Footmen whose job was to run alongside carriages by 1700 were raced against each other for high stakes a pub in Mayfair is named after one

Colonel Pierpoint designed the world’s first ever traffic island in St James’s Street he tripped showing his creation and killed by a cab

Edward Turner, designer of Triumph motorcycles, the Ariel Square Four and the Daimler V8 engine once lived at 87 Rye Hill Park, Southwark

London’s thoroughfares once had Thieving Lane; Whores Nest; Pissing Alley; Cutthroat Lane; Foul Lane; Blowbladder Street; and Cats Hole

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.