On 12 August 1827 poet and engraver William Blake died. Born at 28 Broad Street, now Broadwick Street he would write what many regard as England’s national anthem – Jerusalem – in his rooms in South Molton Street. He lived for most of his life in London dying a poor man at 3 Fountain Court off the Strand. Buried in Bunhill Fields, damaged during World War II the precise location of Blake’s remains have been forgotten.

On 12 August 1707 Henry Chamberlain wrote that ‘the epidemic was so prodigious that the people’s feet made as full an impression them [flies] as upon thick snow’

The heads of executed traitors were displayed on spikes on London Bridge is now commemorated by a giant white spike on the current crossing

Unusual street names: Ha Ha Road Greenwich; Hooker’s Road Walthamstow; Quaggy Walk Blackheath; Cyclops Mews & Uamvar Street Limehouse

St George’s, University of London was founded near Hyde Park Corner in 1733 and was the second establishment in England to formally train doctors

Stalin, Lenin, and Trotsky met at the Brotherhood Church, Islington for the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party it’s now a Tesco Metro

The Beatles played their last gig on the roof of Apple Corps at 3 Saville Row. It’s now an Abercrombie & Fitch, after 42 minutes the police asked them to turn down the volume

When war broke out in 1939, BBC TV shut down half way through Mickey Mouse cartoon. In 1945 the cartoon resumed with apology for the break

The Rom Skate Park in Hornchurch was built in 1978, and was the first skatepark in Europe to be given protected Listed status

All 22 stations on the Metropolitan Line from Amersham to Liverpool Street have an ‘R’ in their name, only Aldgate hasn’t on the whole line

The plinth supporting the South Bank Lion on the south side of Westminster Bridge has a room for security guards to have a cup of tea

You could fit either the Great Pyramid at Giza or the Statue of Liberty inside the O₂ Arena, the largest structure of its kind in the world

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 5 August 1844 Queen Victoria gave birth to her second son, Alfred Ernest, at Windsor Castle. The event was transmitted to the offices of The Times within 40 minutes. Reporting the story The Times described the scoop as: ‘in debt to the extraordinary power of the electromagnetic telegraph’. He was second in the line of succession behind his elder brother, the Prince of Wales, and known to his family as ‘Affie’.

On 5 August 1100 William the Conquerer’s 4th son, Henry I, was crowned King at Westminster Abbey after the ‘accidental’ death of his brother

In 1959 at Wandsworth Prison Guenther Podola became the last man to be hanged in Britain for killing a police officer

Sir Christopher Wren’s first design proposal for St Paul’s featured a 60ft high stone pineapple atop the dome, it would be one of many rejections

The terracotta animals on the façade of the Natural History Museum extinct creatures are to the east of the entrance, the living to the west

At 4 Henrietta St, Covent Garden in August 1922 writer T. E. Lawrence (…of Arabia) tried to enlist in the RAF as John Hume Ross

When the rebuilt Covent Garden Theatre in 1809 raised ticket prices by 1/- riots broke out during the première of Macbeth

In summer 1974 Nude Show what is now the Peacock Theatre had Lindy Salmon’s bikini removed by dolphins Pixie and Penny

In the London 2012 Olympics Sarah Attar later became the first woman from Saudi Arabia to compete in an Olympic athletics event, when she ran in a heat of the 800m

London buses were not always red. Before 1907, different routes had different-coloured buses, London General Omnibus Company painted their fleet of buses red in order to stand out from the competition

7 Bruce Grove, Tottenham was the home of Luke Howard, the ‘namer of clouds’ who proposed the nomenclature system in use today

Etched into the frosted windows of the Albert Tavern in Victoria Street is an image of Prince Albert’s penis, just don’t ask the barmaid where it is situated

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 July 1981 Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul’s Cathedral, 600,000 filled the streets to catch a glimpse of the couple, while the televised nuptials reached an estimated global audience of 750 million, making it the most popular programme ever broadcast. Brian Johnston commentated: “Here they come, down the pavilion st- . . . the cathedral steps.” The UK had a national holiday on that day to mark the wedding.

On 29 July 1972 Screaming Lord Sutch was arrested in London after getting off a bus in Downing Street accompanied by 4 naked women

The original medieval London Bridge in use for more than 600 years featured heads of criminals displayed on spikes for more than half of that time

The Metropolitan Police’s iconic revolving sign ‘New Scotland Yard’ once on Broadway performed over 14,000 revolutions every day

Kenneth Grahame author of The Wind in The Willows and secretary of the Bank of England was shot at in the bank by a deranged George Robinson

Big Ben is the bell, not the clock tower, now renamed Elizabeth Tower in honour of the Queen. Its chime is in the key of E

Harry Secombe, Spike Milligan and Michael Bentine once shared a small flat at 13 Linden Gardens, Notting Hill

French Ordinary Court EC3 takes it’s name from a fixed price menu or as Samuel Pepys called it a French Ordinary

On 29 July 1948 King George VI opened the 14th modern Olympic games in London, the first Summer Olympics to be held since 1936

Only two Tube stations have all five vowels in their name: South Ealing and Mansion House and more than half of the London Underground network in fact runs above ground

Old Billingsgate Market was originally opened in 1016 selling food and wine, with fish becoming the sole trade later

Princess Diana’s first owned apartment was at Coleherne Court, Earls Court given to her as an 18th birthday present

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 July 1965 the Rolling Stones were at it agin. Appearing before East Ham Magistrate’s Court charged with insulting behavious after urinating on the wall of a petrol station when refused entry to use the toilet. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Bill Wyman were each fined £5. The incident had occurred on 18 March with the petrol station attendant Charles Keeley describing Wyman as “a shaggy-haired monster wearing dark glasses”.

On 22 July 2005 Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police at Stockwell Station mistaken for a suicide bomber

London gangster Charlie Richardson claimed to have help bug Harold Wilson’s Downing Street phones for South African intelligence agency

Clerkenwell is named after the ‘Clerk’s Well’ that supplied Charterhouse. It can be seen through the window of Well Court, Farringdon Lane

There was a public latrine on Old London Bridge that plopped directly into the Thames, providing boatmen with a fresh source of worry

Voltaire, Edgar Allen Poe, Ho Chi Minh, Mahatma Gandhi, Vincent Van Gogh, Sigmund Freud, and Hiter’s older half-brother all lived in London

London’s home to the world’s largest block of acrylic by Tower Hotel it’s a 1-tonne cuboid reject for 2001: A Space Odyssey – black was used

Zog self-proclaimed King of Albania, fled to London when Mussolini invaded with his country’s gold. Booked into the Ritz and paid in bullion

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

On the eastbound platform a roundel still reads St. James’ Park, the rest have the current spelling and punctuation, St. James’s Park

The Queen’s Remembrancer the oldest legal post presides over the Trial of the Pyx where 26 gold smiths are sworn in to weigh Royal Mint coins

It’s an odd coincidence at £4m modern London Bridge cost the same as buying, transporting and re-erecting the old bridge at Lake Havasu, USA

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 July 1821 journalist Pierce Egan published Life in London or, the Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorne, esq. and his elegant friend, Corinthian Tom, accompanied by Bob Logic, the Oxonian in their rambles and sprees through the Metropolis. Despite its lengthy title it was an instant success with many pirated versions produced. When it reached America it eventually was translated into the Tom and Jerry of cartoon fame.

On 15 July 2000 London Underground was transferred from the control of the Government to Transport for London (TfL), and ultimately under the jurisdiction of the Mayor of London

‘Monkey Suckers’ perfected the art of drilling into barrels stored at East End docks then using tube to suck out a bottle, or two, of rum

Cheapside get its name from the Saxon word for market – ‘chepe’ as this was London’s main market in medieval times

More than 1,000 bodies are buried underneath Aldgate station, in a plague pit built over 2 weeks in 1665, its location is now Aldgate Underground Station

The last person to be executed at the Tower of London was Josef Jakobs, a German Intelligence agent. He was shot by firing sqaud in 1941

It is probable that Charles Dickens modelled the Cratchit’s house in Camden Town on his first London home at 16 Bayham Street

Samuel Scott’s speciality was to tie a noose around his neck then jump off Waterloo bridge and dance in the air before returning safely, ultimately he didn’t

Fulham FC are the oldest professional football club in London having been derived from St Andrew’s Church team

Farringdon underground station is the only station from which passengers exited en masse on their way to a public hanging

Every July the two companies take part in ‘Swan Upping’ which is the marking and census of all cygnets between Sunbury and Abingdon

In 1949 a flock of starlings landed on the minute hand of Big Ben it put the time back by 4.5 minutes, and snow caused the clock to ring in the New Year 10 minutes late in 1962

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.