On 14 February 1895 Oscar Wilde’s most enduring play, The Importance of Being Earnest, was premiered at the St. James’s Theatre, in King Street on a really cold St. Valentine’s Day. With already three other successful productions currently being performed in London, it would go on to be his most successful and quoted play. Lady Bracknell, she of “a handbag”, was played by the gloriously named Miss Rose Leclercq.

On 14 February 1946 the Bank of England (‘The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’) was nationalised with the signing of a 250-page bill by King George VI

‘Do not attempt to travel by taxi while suffering from the plague’. Extract from the Public Health Act 1985. Just so you know should the need arise

The City of London the historical core of the Capital, roughly matches the boundaries the Roman city of Londinium and of medieval London

London’s first traffic lights, situated outside the Palace of Westminster, blew up injuring a policeman and causing passing cavalry horses to stampede

Upminster Bridge station has a swastika motif on the floor of the ticket hall installed before the symbol took on its sinister reputation

John Stow’s monument depicting him writing his Survey of London, he is holding a real quill pen, the quill is replaced every 5 years by the Lord Mayor

The London Eye can carry 800 people each rotation, which is comparable to 11 London red double-decker buses

In 1891 Arsenal was the first London club to turn professional, called the Royal Arsenal when the club turned professional the name changed to Woolwich Arsenal

The first parking meter was installed in Mayfair with a charge of one shilling per hour (5p) today the same fee buys you 45 seconds

The ‘porter’ style of beer was officially invented at the Bell Brewhouse in Shoreditch by Ralph Hardwood in 1722

The guns of HMS Belfast are targeted on Barnet in north London, but with a range of 30 miles could destroy Scratchwood Services on the M1

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 7 February 1845 the Portland Vase, dating from the 1st century BC, was shattered into more than 80 pieces. A drunken visitor to the British Museum, William Mulcahy, threw a sculpted stone exhibit at the glass cabinet containing the treasured artifact, acquired in 1784 by the Duchess of Portland, a noted collector of antiquities and loaned the vase to the British Museum in London for permanent exhibition, where it was seemingly safe.

On 7 February 1996 Concorde left Heathrow and created a new world record between New York and London of 2 hours, 52 minutes and 59 seconds

The everlasting staircase was a giant 24-spoke paddle wheel that 40 prisoners walked for 8 hours in Brixton generating power to grind corn

Finance for building the first Westminster Bridge was raised in the 1730s via lottery with an enormous silver wine cooler as prize

J. M. Barrie donated all the royalties from Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. The copyright has only recently expired

When Queen Victoria visited The Duchess of Sutherland at Lancaster House she remarked that it was grander than Buckingham Palace

The house in which actor William Henry Pratt, aka Boris Karloff, lived is now the Sea Master fish and chip shop, Peckham Rye

Covent Garden receives over 44 million visitors a year, making it one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world

The Surbiton Club in 1891 requested members playing billiards partaking of snuff to ‘leave no nasal excreta’ on the baize

The total number of stations served on the network is 270; The District Line has the most stations at 60. The Underground’s fewest is the Waterloo and City Line with none

Smithfield Market incorporating 3 listed Victorian buildings is the largest wholesale meat market in Britain, the area also contains London’s oldest surviving church, St Bartholomew-the-Great, circa 1123

Tradition dictates the Tower must always have 6 ravens. Baldrick is number seven in the pecking order and George was sacked in 1986 for eating TV aerials

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 31 January 1983 drivers and front seat passengers were required by law to wear seatbelts. There were be some exceptions to the new law. Taxi drivers were exempt because of the possible threat to their safety from dangerous passengers, though curiously London cabbies were required to belt up if they were plying for hire, only when they had a fare could they unbuckle. Drivers of milk floats were also exempt.

On 31 January 1606 Guy Fawkes was executed after being convicted for his role in the ‘Gunpowder Plot’ against the English Parliament and King James I

Banker Henry Fauntleroy’s public hanging for defrauding the Bank of England of £250,000 attracted the largest ever crowd with 100,000 people

At 202ft The Monument is the tallest unsupported stone column in the world and is 202ft from the seat of the Great Fire of London it depicts

London’s first gas-powered traffic lights on Parliament Square in 1868 blew up killing a policeman and caused cavalry horses to stampede

Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli speaking in Parliament, referring to taxis said of them: “The Hansom cabs are the gondolas of London”

Landseer copied the forepaws of a domestic moggie for his lions at the base of Nelson’s Column, if you look carefully they are too dainty

The world’s first jigsaw was created in 1761 by London engraver John Spilsbury by cutting them out by hand and naming them ‘dissected maps’

The University Boat Race from Putney to Mortlake has taken its crews from Oxford and Cambridge since 1829 and 30 per cent have been Old Etonians

On 31 January 1915 Warwick Avenue tube station opened, prior to its opening the proposed name for the station was Warrington Crescent

The upper class bank situated on the Strand, Coutts and Co. has handled the accounts of every British monarch since King George III

A mulberry tree in Buckingham Palace gardens is said to be the last of 4 acres planted by James I attempting to start England’s silk industry

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 24 January 1907 William Whiteley was shot dead outside the office of his own store by 29-year-old Horace George Raynor, who then turned the gun on himself. Raynor, who survived, claimed to be the illegitimate son of the store’s owner by his Whiteley’s long-term mistress, former shop girl, Louie Turner. Raynor’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1919 on licence.

On 24 January 1965 Winston Churchill following a stroke died at his home at Hyde Park Gate aged 90, he ordered his coffin leave London from Waterloo just to annoy General de Gaulle

Acid Bath Murderer Haigh dissolved his victims in a house now occupied by the Kentucky Fried Chicken Gloucester Road

On 24 January 1956 plans were unveiled for homes in Barbican a public inquiry considered plans to build in the area left devastated by war

During the plague of 1665 Londoners lived on huge rafts floating on the Thames in an attempt to escape the pestilence

The howitzer sculpture at Hyde Park Corner is pointed at the Somme – but if it was a real, its range would mean it would hit Crystal Palace

The Travellers Club in Pall Mall is the fictional start to Jules Verne’s story Around The World In Eighty Days

Hidden under the Ministry of Defence are Cardinal Wolsey’s wine cellars from the Whitehall Palace which burned down in 1698

The Racing Driver’s Handbook on how to behave on a racetrack is called The Blue Book the same as the Knowledge book of runs for cabbies

Only five Underground stations have ‘X’ in their names: Uxbridge, Brixton, Oxford Circus, Vauxhall and Croxley

The Bowler Hat is named after Mr Bowler who made it but Locks the Hatters call it the Coke after Mr Coke who ordered it

London cabbie George King founded the Aetherius Society to prevent the annihilation of Earth by improving cooperation with alien species

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 January 1934, The Times reported that Battersea Power Station was fully operational, known as Battersea A. The building as we know it would not be completed until 1955. During the 4 years of constructing Battersea A, there were six fatal and 121 non-fatal accidents. This history of this iconic building which went into decline on 17 March 1975 when A station was closed is now the subject of a book by Peter Watts Up in Smoke.

On 17 January 1712 Robert Walpole, England’s first ‘Prime Minister’ was imprisoned in the Tower of London following charges of corruption

Byng Street, Wapping named after a seafaring family, one of whom Admiral Byng was executed for cowardice on the deck of HMS Monarque in 1757

Adelaide House completed in 1925 was the first building in the City to employ the steel frame technique at 141ft the tallest block in London

The gravestone of the famous Elizabethan actor Richard Burbage in the graveyard of St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, reads simply ‘Exit Burbage’

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

The George Inn, Borough High St. dates back to 1676, is the last galleried coaching inn in London and is mentioned in Dickens’ Little Dorrit

In the early 1800s Thomas Britton ran a music club above his coal shop in Jerusalem Passage, Handel often attended

The footbridge outside Wembley Stadium is named White Horse Bridge after the police horse who controlled the 1923 FA Cup Final

There’s only one Tube station that doesn’t have any of the letters from the word mackerel in it: St John’s Wood

In 14th century London employed Rakers to rake the excrement out of toilets, notably one Richard the Raker died by drowning in his own toilet

Between 17-25 January 1963 the temperature at Kew failed to rise above freezing that winter is regarded equal to the infamous winter of 1740

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.