On 11 November 1920, as the Cenotaph was unveiled by King George V, two years after the Armistice the bodies of two unknown First World War soldiers were interned, one in Westminster Abbey and one beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The idea of a Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was first conceived in 1916 by the Rev. David Railton, who had seen a grave which bore the pencil-written legend ‘An Unknown British Soldier’.

On 11 November 1983 Mary Donaldson became the first woman to be the City of London’s Lord Mayor, one of the world’s oldest continuously elected civic offices

It is illegal in London to have sex on a parked motorcycle, beat a carpet in a public park, or impersonate a Chelsea pensioner

The Ritz hotel in Piccadilly was built on a site previously occupied by The Old White Horse Cellar, one of the most famous coaching inns in London

The remains of a Roman teenage girl were unearthed during the construction of The Gherkin, she was reburied near where she was found

On 11 November 1100 (11-11-1100) King Henry I of England married Matilda of Scotland at Westminster Abbey

The Lanesborough Hotel had 3 original Reynolds and boasts the largest collection of 18th century paintings in the world outside any gallery

The Fox and Anchor-Smithfield and Market Porter-Borough are licensed to serve alcohol from 7am to fit in with the hours worked by market porters

Tennis legend Fred Perry is commemorated by to plaques in Ealing. His ashes are buried near his statute at Wimbledon

Just outside Temple Tube station is an original pre-Beck map in a glass case. (In other words its lines are bendy rather than straight.)

The only London-based gin distillery left today is Beefeater Gin, which is based on Kennington in the former Haywards pickle factory

The River Thames is two hundred and fifteen miles long, has 47 locks and carries some 300,000 tonnes of sediment a year

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 4 November 1964 the Fortnum & Mason clock, designed by Berkeley Sutcliffe positioned above the store’s Piccadilly entrance was officially started, 4ft high mechanical figures, Mr Mason and Mr Fortnum emerge every hour from separate pavilions to make half a circuit before ‘ringing’ their respective bells. The 18 bells from the same foundry as Big Ben ring every 15 minutes a selection of airs.

On 4 November 1852 The House of Commons press gallery where journalists may observe and write was opened. 300 are accredited by the Serjeant-at-Arms

An old police box aka TARDIS can be found outside Earl’s Court station. The same station that had the Underground’s first escalator on 4 October 1911

Records show that the site of OXO Tower, bought for £75,000 by the Leibig Extract of Meat Company in the 1920s, was once used as a butchery!

Charles II, encouraged by Nell Gwyn, founded Chelsea Royal Hospital in 1682 for injured Civil War veterans. Soldiers over the age of 65 may apply to become a Chelsea Pensioner

In 1796 a Commons Committee spent days debating a plan to dig a channel across the Isle of Dogs to save sailing time around the peninsular

In his study at Harrington Gardens SW7 W S Gilbert saw a Japanese sword fall from the wall and inspired him to write The Mikado

Piccadilly may take it’s name from Piccadilly Hall so called home of Robert Baker, a tailor who sold piccadillies, a form of collar or ruff

London has more professional football clubs than any other city in the world except Buenos Aires. In 2013 the Football Association celebrated the 150th anniversary of its formation in a tavern in Holborn

The average speed on the Underground is 20.5 miles per hour including station stops but on the Metropolitan Line trains can reach over 60mph

From his Wapping soap factory John Knight produced the famous Knight’s Castile soap, which won a medal at the Great Exhibition of 1851

In 1995 Holborn had a bizarre claim to fame as the most commonly mispronounced word in the English language. Remember the l is silent

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 28 October 1215 the first Lord Mayor was presented to the monarch during the reign of King John and that tradition in the form of the Lord Mayor’s Show continues to this day. The first Mayor of London in 1189 was Henry Fitz Alwyn, but it was William Hardell, who went in procession from the City to Westminster to swear the oath of allegiance to the King. Hardell was one of the enforcers of Magna Carta.

On 28 October 1958 the State Opening of Parliament was first broadcast on BBC Television, Richard Dimbleby commentated on the first time Parliament allowed the cameras in to watch the ceremony

There is no place called Euston Square because of the 1878 murder of Matilda Hacker who was found dead in a cellar at No 4 having been strangled, it was subsequently changed to Torrington Square

The world’s first public street lighting with gas was installed in Pall Mall, London in 1807. In 1812, the London and Westminster Gas Light and Coke Company became the world’s first gas company

In 1952, the Great Smog of London was so bad that blind people led sighted people home from the train stations

The two bollards at the end of Boundary Passage are French cannons from the Battle of Trafalgar. They have a cannonball bunging their muzzle

1970’s ITV sitcom On The Buses starring Reg Varney was partly filmed at Wood Green bus depot as well as Lavender Hill cemetery

The Museum of London, which retraces the history of London from Prehistoric times to the present day, is the largest urban history museum in the world

The badge of West Ham United Football Club is a reminder that their nickname ‘The Hammers’ comes, not from their location, but from their origins as the works team of the Thames Ironworks shipbuilders

In the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the Hogwarts headmaster has a scar that resembles a map of the London Underground on his knee

Busking has been licensed on the Tube since 2003. Sting and Paul McCartney are both rumoured to have busked on the Underground in disguise

Berry Bros & Rudd on St. James’s Street have an 18th-century coffee scales, once used Lord Byron (13 stone at the age of 17)

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 21 October 1856 the Great Bell cast by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry was delivered to Palace Yard on a dray pulled by 16 horses taking 18 hours. It was proposed to call this bell ‘Big Ben’ after Sir Benjamin Hall the President of the Board of Works. The 13½ ton bell was pulled 200ft up to the Clock Tower’s belfry, a feat that took 18 hours, 7ft 6in tall and 9ft diameter, it soon cracked giving it the distinctive ring we know today.

On 21 October 1805 the British fleet commanded by Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated a French-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar, fatally wounded, was brought back and interned in St. Paul’s Cathedral

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.