On 5 September 1975, two people were killed and 63 injured when a suspected IRA bomb exploded in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane. A warning was sent to the Daily Mail just before midday, but the police were unable to evacuate the building before it exploded just after 12.15 p.m.

On 5 September 1988 No Sex Please We’re British the West End’s longest running comedy closed after 16 years and 6,671 performances

Thomas Cromwell, Vicar-General for Henry VIII, introduced a scheme where each parish, in the presence of the warders, must record all baptisms, marriages and burials

In 1831 London became the first city in the world to have 1 million inhabitants only overtaken in size by Tokyo 126 years later

When Guy Fawkes was executed hanging broke his neck preventing the drawing and quartering (removing his intestines, arms and legs) while alive

When entering The Houses of Parliament its Members are still banned from wearing a suit of armour under an Act made by Edward II in 1313

Lions of Trafalgar Square were sculpted from life artist Landseer used dead lions from London Zoo until neighbours complained of the smell

The London Eye can carry 800 people each rotation comparable to 11 double decker buses receives on average more visitors per year than the Taj Mahal and the Great Pyramid of Giza

After Percy Lambert was killed racing at Brooklands in 1913 he was buried at Brompton Cemetery in a coffin designed to match his racing car

Wealthy oil baron Nubar Gulbenkian had a luxurious taxi conversion. He told friends “Apparently it can turn on a sixpence, whatever that is”

St. Paul’s Cathedral at 365ft high and over 40 years to construct. It took so long to complete its builders had the reputation of being lazy

The only qualification needed to join Edmund Kean’s Wolf Club at the Coal Hole, Strand was your wife had forbidden you to sing in the bath

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 29 August 1975 Roger Goad, an explosives officer with the London Metropolitan Police, was called to look at a suspicious package on Kensington Church Street, he attempted to defuse the bomb, but it exploded, killing him instantly. The bomb had been placed by the IRA unit that was eventually captured at the Balcombe Street Siege.

On 29 August 1963, John Fowles complained to his diary that there were no houses available in Hampstead for under £15,000

Shad Thames was known as Jacob’s Island a notoriously dangerous place, featured in Oliver Twist where Bill Sikes meets his end hanging by a rope above Folly Ditch’s mud

The 1.8km long Limehouse Link tunnel cost £293 million to build in 1993, around £163,000 per metre, making it Britain’s most expensive road scheme

Cock Lane opposite Bart’s is where John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, died of a fever in 1688

Catholic monarch Mary Tudor watched Protestant martyrs burn at the stake at Smithfield from the gatehouse of St Bartholomew-the-Great

In An American Werewolf in London (1981) its lycanthropic protagonist, David meets his timely end in Winchester Walk, Borough

The Savoy Hotel’s Chef Escoffier created the dish Peach Melba for opera singer Dame Nellie Melba who was a regular guest

Oldest surviving regular contest in the World Doggett’s Coat and Badge Race rowing up the Thames between two Swan pubs: London Bridge to Chelsea

The London taxi must have a turning circle no more than 25 foot to enable it to U-turn from a cab rank and to complete a single turn outside the Savoy Hotel

The toothbrush was invented in Newgate prison by William Addis in 1770. Inspired by a broom, he inserted bristles into an animal bone

Petticoat Lane is not on any London map as it was renamed Middlesex Street in 1830, though known to Londoners it doesn’t officially exist

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 22 August 1809 according to the London Gazette a duel took place in a field between Highgate and Hampstead Heath between two Hibernians, not by pugilism, but with cudgels, their national weapons. They fought for an hour and five minutes with the greater desperation until O’Reilly fell to the ground covered in contusions.

On 22 August 1854 magistrates spent three hours dealing with cases arising from the fair at Camberwell, including numerous children, as young as nine or ten, who were charged with pickpocketing

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.

On 15 August 1921, a 15-year-old boy entered a branch of the London County, Westminster & Parr’s Bank on Streatham High Road and asked for a 5½ per cent Treasury bond on behalf of a local known resident when the clerk turned his back the boy seized a bundle of £1,000 in Treasury notes and disappeared.

On 15 August 1941 Josef Jakobs, a German spy, was the last person to be executed in the Tower of London by firing squad. Because he had a broken ankle he was shot sitting down

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.