On 16 May 1763 diarist James Boswell met Samuel Johnson in a chance encounter in Davies Bookshop in Covent Garden. Their resulting friendship resulted in Boswell writing The Life of Samuel Johnson, published in 1791, because of the frankness of the writing, incorporating conversations that he had noted down in his diary, it is acknowledge to be one of the greatest biographical work in the English language.

On 16 May 1968 a gas explosion on the 18th floor of Ronan Point kiled 4 and injured 7, the tragedy temporarily stalled the building of high-rise flats

On 16 May 1983 a Mercedes in Sloane Street became the first car in central London to be clamped – the release fee was £19.50

Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate High Street, at 446 feet above sea level, is officially London’s highest theatre

Aldgate Station, on the Circle and Metropolitan Lines, is built on a massive plague pit, where more than 1,000 bodies are buried

The Penderel’s Oak public house, High Holborn is named after yeoman farmer, Richard Penderel, who helped King Charles I escape by hiding him in a wood

The Grade II listed Serpentine Sackler Gallery, in Kensington Gardens, which opened in 2013, was in 1805 originally a gunpowder store

A ‘tolerable Cockney imitation of the seaside’, was how one paper described the artificial beach near Tower Bridge which closed in 1971

London has 13 gold post boxes, commemorating the gold medals awarded in the 2012 Olympics, and 2 celebrating the London Olympics

The busiest station is Oxford Circus at 98 million passengers the Tube’s total carried in 2013/14 was 1.265 billion the world’s 11th highest

The historic Angel Tavern, (now a Co-op Bank), is mentioned in Dickens’ Oliver Twist, was where Thomas Paine began writing The Rights of Man

Whittington Stone on Highgate Hill is a memorial to the famous mayor, a sculpture of his cat is patted by Knowledge students for good luck

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 9 May 1662, the first performance of a Punch and Judy show at Covent Garden was recorded in Samuel Pepys’s diary entry, it is believed a similar puppet show has been seen there every year since. The original was performed by the Italian puppet showman Pietro Gimonde from Bologna, otherwise known as Signor Bologna and was honoured with a royal command performance by Charles II at Whitehall.

On 9 May 1949 Britain’s first coin-operated launderette, Central Wash, opened for a 6 month trial in Queensway, Bayswater

On 9 May 1726 five men found at Mother Clap’s molly house (“molly” being slang for a gay man at the time) were hanged at Tyburn

The Brick Lane Mosque’s building has also been a protestant church and a synagogue, the only building in the world to have done so

Pugin designed St. Thomas of Canterbury Church on Rylston Road it has Joseph Aloysius Hansom, who invented the Victorian cab in its graveyard

St. Edward’s Crown the centrepiece of a coronation is only ever touched by The Monarch, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Crown Jeweller

It cost a penny to watch the Bard’s plays at the Globe, standing they were called ‘groundlings’, mockingly referred to as ‘penny-stinkers’

On 9 May 1914 William Newell made the first parachute jump in Britain from an aeroplane over Hendon Aerodrome. He survived

Mitcham cricket green is believed to be the oldest in the world continuously used to play the game, it has seen the game played since 1685

Britain’s first ubiquitous speed bumps were installed on Linver Road and Alderville Road, Fulham in 1984, the nightmare had begun

Chancery Lane was previously known as Chaunceleres Lane, and prior to that New Street, it has been home to the legal profession since 1377

The Queen Mother started the enduring royal wedding tradition of leaving the bride’s bouquet on the Abbey’s Tomb of the Unknown Warrior

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 May 1997 at 43 years of age, Tony Blair became the youngest British prime minister since 1812 and moved into Downing Street. By September he attained early personal popularity, receiving a 93 per cent public approval rating, after his public response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. After winning 3 terms he stepped down on 24 June 2007 for Gordon Brown, after his popularity had waned.

On 2 May 1952 the first jet airliner, Britain’s De Havilland Comet I, made its maiden flight from London Airport to Johannesburg

On 2 May 1905 at Old Bailey brothers Albert and Alfred Stratton became the first in Britain convicted of murder based on fingerprint evidence

English Heritage have recorded over 600 garden squares in London, more than 400 are protected by the London Squares Preservation Act of 1931

On 2 May 1975 Footballer David Beckham was born at Whipps Cross Hospital. He lived at 150 Norman Road, Leytonstone as young boy

On 2 May 1536 Mary Queen of Scots was sent to The Tower she was subsequently executed her little dog was later discovered under her skirts

In 1898 the Gramophone Company opened the first British studio on Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, producing some of the world’s earliest recordings

On 2 May 1953 Elizabeth II attended her first Wembley FA Cup Final as Queen. Blackpool beat Bolton 4-3. In February 2010 the boots worn by Stanley Matthews in the match were auctioned for £38,400

On 2 May 1964 West Ham won the FA Cup but as the Hammers celebrated manager Ron Greenwood and the disguised FA Cup headed home on the tube!

Described as ‘gloriously ugly’, with disgusting toilets and limited parking, Thurrock Services was voted the worst motorway stop in Britain

In 1855 Robert Yeates of 233 Hackney Road give us a dedicated tool for opening the tins. Before that the instructions had read: ‘Cut around the top near the outer edge with a chisel and hammer.’

On 2 May 1933 the Inverness Courier reported a London tourist sighting a strange spectacle in Loch Ness. The legend had begun

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 April 1719, what many regard to be the first work of realised fiction, a novel in the English language, was published in London by W. Taylor. Many of its readers believed Daniel Defoe’s story of a castaway called Robinson Crusoe who spends 27 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad encountering cannibals, captives and mutineers before being rescued to be a autobiographical travelogue.

On 25 April 1682 a severe storm flooded St. James’s Park, it was recorded that a skiff could be rowed up Brentford High Street

Tests conducted in the Thames discovered weight loss in eels from ingesting cocaine, the highest concentrations were outside Parliament

King William Walk, Greenwich named after the statue at its southern end is London’s first in granite which originally stood at London Bridge

Chelsea Physic Garden founded in 1673 to train apothecaries, sent cotton seeds from the garden as the nucleus of Georgia’s cotton plantations

On 25 April 1660 The Convention Parliament voted for the restoration of King Charles II to the throne, the act forgave and pardoned people for past actions and it allowed the new monarch a fresh start

Fassett Square was the model for the fictional Albert Square in the BBC’s Eastenders, in fact two Albert Squares are to be found in London

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

Millwall (Rovers) were formed in the summer of 1885 by workers at Morton’s Jam Factory on the Isle of Dogs

Only five London Underground stations lie outside the M25 motorway, Amersham, Chalfont & Latimer, Chesham, and Chorleywood on the Metropolitan line and Epping on the Central Line

Julian Lloyd Webber is rumoured to have been the London Underground’s first busker, it’s not known if he managed to make a living busking

In 1886 a visiting group of Americans gifted a piece of Plymouth Rock, the Founding Fathers landing spot, to the Union Chapel, Islington

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 April 1988 in a heated debate on the Poll Tax Scottish Labour member Ron Brown, grabbed the mace and angrily threw it to the floor. Parliament cannot lawfully meet without the Mace, representing the monarch’s authority, being present in the chambers. Afterward he agreed to read out a pre-written apology to the House, attempting to add his own comments. Suspended from Parliament for 20 days, he was ordered to pay £1,500.

On 18 April 1930 during its 8.45 bulletin, a BBC announcer said: “There is no news.” The rest of the programme featured piano music

According to tradition, the Bowyer Tower was where the Duke of Clarence, troublesome brother of Edward IV and Richard III, was drowned in a butt of malmsey wine

On 18 April 1968 London Bridge was sold to entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch of McCulloch Oil for £1,029,000 at Guildhall

Domestic servants with visible smallpox scars were preferred to those unmarked, proof that they would not bring smallpox into the household

Smoking was banned in the House of Commons as early as 1693. It was still smokey though from candles and fires that lit and warmed the place

Since 1768 the Royal Academy has been housed in: Pall Mall; Somerset House; and the National Gallery. Its present site dates from 1868

The Bedford on Bedford Hill, Balham hosts the regular Banana Cabaret it has hosted acts such as Jack Dee, Catherine Tate and Eddie Izzard

Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Sugar Ray Leonard and Henry Cooper have all sparred at the Thomas à Beckett boxing gym on Old Kent Road

Swiss visitor César de Saussure in 1725 recorded being knocked over four times by sedan chairs during his visit to London

Samuel Morse the American painter and inventor of the Morse Code lived at 141 Cleveland Street between 1812-15

There have been ghostly reports of drivers picking up a young hitchhiker at the mouth of Blackwall Tunnel only disappear by the other end

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.