On 24 June 1699 the oldest house of worship for Ashkenazi Jews got the go ahead, when a committee lead by Rabbi David Nieto leased land at Plough Yard in Bevis Marks from Lady Ann and Sir Thomas Payntz. Curiously the Bevis Marks synagogue was constructed by Joseph Avis – a Quaker. The building was necessitated by the considerable influx of jews into east London making the synagogue in Cree Street unsuitable.

On 24 June 1830 Peter James Bossy became the last person to stand in a London pillory, tried for perjury sentenced to transportation for 7 years, but prior to that having to stand in the pillory for one hour

The original indictment of notorious highwayman Dick Turpin (real name John Palmer) is held in the National Archives in Kew, Richmond

The Monument commemorating the Great Fire of London in 1666 is the tallest isolated stone column in the world. It rises to 202ft on Fish Hill, 202ft away from where the fire began in a bakery in Pudding Lane

A fragrance known as Madeleine was trialled at St. James Park, Euston, and Piccadilly stations in 2001, to make the Tube more pleasant, stopped within days after complaints from people saying they felt ill

On Sunday 24 June 1509 the Coronation of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon took place at Westminster Abbey

In Alfred Hitchcock’s first feature film The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) featured the director making a cameo on the Tube

On 24 June 1963 saw the first demonstration of home video recorder at BBC Studios in London, using quarter inch tape it could record up to 20 minutes of low quality black and white television programmes

The earliest known account of sport in London was written in 1174 by William Fitzstepen, due to translation errors the game described is not apparent

London was the first city in the world to have a licensed taxi trade on 24 June 1654 the City of London authorised the use of 200 licenses

One City firm in the 1950s gave new employees a set of instructions including: ‘You will wear a bowler hat to and from the office’

On 24 June 1717 Premier Grand Lodge of England founded the Grand Lodge of London & Westminster latterly called the Grand Lodge of England

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 June 1789 Her Majesty’s Theatre, Haymarket, known for opera, was burnt to the ground during evening rehearsals. The fire had been deliberately started on the roof. The owner Giovanni Gallini offered a reward of £300 for the capture of the culprit who was never traced. The name of the theatre changes with the sex of the monarch. It first became the King’s Theatre in 1714 on the accession of George I.

On 17 June 1497 King Henry VIII leading a 25,000 strong army decisively beat an army of Cornishmen at Deptford Bridge who were rebelling against a tax levy ironically for war

Appeal Court Judge, Lord Bowen introduced the phrase, “The man on the Clapham omnibus”, to describe the average man in the street

To reduce noise wooden cobbles replaced stone in Victorian London, one of the last timbered roads is Chequer Street in Islington

The phase ‘pea-souper’ for a London fog refers to the fact that Londoners made pea soup from yellow split peas the colour of thick fog

The House of Commons’ press gallery bar is named Moncrieff’s in honour of respected political journalist, Chris Moncrieff – a teetotaller

Artist J. M. W. Turner lived at 118 and 119 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea using the roof as a vantage point for his painting

Priced at 7s in June 1935 the world’s first video was sold by Major Radiovision, Wigmore Street using discs to record 12 minutes of images

Opened in 1852 Islington’s Agricultural Hall (now Business Design Centre) was London’s first multi-purpose indoor arena, in 1878 a six-day walking race was held watched in 20,000

The London Underground is thought to be the third largest metro system in the world, in terms of miles, after the Beijing Subway and the Shanghai Metro

The original Royal Exchange was Britain’s first specialist commercial building reflecting London as the country’s premier trading port

On 17 June 1959 rhinestoned pianist Liberace won £8,000 damages from the Daily Mirror who claimed, quite reasonably, that he might be gay

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 10 June 2000 the Millennium Bridge opened, hundreds wanted to be the first to use the new pedestrian only bridge and got a fright as it began to wobble alarmingly. It subsequently was closed for two years enabling the enginers to solve the problem by installing ‘dampers’. In spite of the successful fix of the problem, the affectionate ‘wobbly bridge’ epithet remains in common usage among Londoners.

On 10 June 1845 New Oxvord Street was officially opened, with the demolition of the infamous St. Giles Rookery regarded as the poorest area of London

In June 1982 Italian banker Roberto Calvi was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge, his clothes weighed down with stones

According to a 2013 report London is the world’s 3rd greenest city behind Singapore and Sydney: 122 heaths; 600 parks; 1,500 laying fields; and 125 recreation grounds

There’s a mosquito named the London Underground mosquito found in tunnels notable for stinging Londoners sleeping there during the Blitz

In June 1815 Major Henry Percy interrupted a ball at 16 St James Square to announce that 3days earlier we had defeated the French at Waterloo

Much of James Cameron’s Alien was filmed in a disuded power station in Acton, and not in outer space as some might have thought

For those visiting Hamley’s toy store today, it was founded by Cornishman William Hamley in 1760, first named Noah’s Ark and sited in Holborn

Tennis legend Fred Perry is commemorated by two plaques in Ealing, his ashes are buried near his statute at Wimbledon

The total number of passengers carried during 2013/14 was 1.265 billion – making it the world’s 11th busiest metro

Bermondsey’s Tanner Street and Morocco Street and Old Leathermarket are reminders of when the leather industry was based there

In June 1871 two giants got married: Anna Swan (7′ 5.5″) married Martin Van Buren Bates (7′ 2.5″) at St Martins in the Field Church

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 3 June 1982 Shlomo Argov the Israeli ambassador was shot whilst leaving a displomatic function at the Dorchester Hotel. The gunman fired two shots – one narrowly missing Mr Argov’s police protection officer and the other hitting the envoy in the head. The assailant was shot by the bodyguard, two others escaped but were arrested in Brixton. Robert Maxwell was in the hotel at the time, but, alas escaped unscathed.

On 3 June 1931 saw the world’s first outside broadcast as the BBC transmitted live pictures of the Epsom Derby using a single van-mounted camera

William Wallace, commemorated in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, was the first to suffer the ignominious fate of being hanged, drawn and quartered

The oldest church in the City All Hallows by the Tower was founded in 675 the undercroft has Roman pavement dating from the 2nd century

Tube has a unique species of mosquito identified by Queen Mary and Westfield College it feeds off rats and humans is unable to breed with other species

The night before the 1911 census suffragette Emily Davison hid in a cupboard in the House of Commons so she could claim that was her address

On 3 June 1970 Kink’s Ray Davies made round trip New York-London to change word in Lola (Coca-Cola to Cherry Cola) because of BBC commercial reference ban

Simpson’s-in-the-Strand was known as the home of chess, its serving practise-wheeling food out under silver domes-originates avoiding disturbing a game of chess

The Surbiton Club hired a ‘marker’ for its billiard room with an allowance of 18 gallons on beer a month, the first recruit, unsurprisingly was sacked for drunkenness

In cockney rhyming slang the Underground is known as the Oxo (Cube/ Tube), and there are only two tube station names that contain all five vowels: Mansion House, and South Ealing

By 1883 Fleet Street’s newspapers produced 15 morning dailies, 9 evening papers and 383 weekly publications, of which 50 were local rags

Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, was so taken with the Lambeth Walk that he hired an English girl to teach him the dance in Milan

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 27 May 1679 Habeas Corpus Act received its Royal Assent. Instigated by the First Earl of Shaftsbury, the ancient prerogative writ of habeas corpus, with later amendments, is a procedural device to force the courts to examine the lawfulness of a prisoner’s detention in order to safeguard individual liberty and thus to prevent unlawful or arbitrary imprisonment. It was subsequently incorporated into the American Constitution.

On 27 May 1541 Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury one of the last Plantagenets was beheaded at the Tower of London for her son’s criticism of Henry VIII’s divorce

In 1517 ‘Evil May Day’ saw riots against traders from Flanders, Italy and France led by John Lincoln he and other ringleaders were later hanged

Christopher Wren had originally wanted a stone pineapple on the dome of St Paul’s he saw them as a symbol of peace and hospitality

The first baby to be born on the underground was born at Elephant and Castle in 1924, she was named Marie Cordery

Harold Wilson lived at 5 Lord North Street, during his last term serving as Prime Minister spurning the official residence in Downing Street

With over 45 million visitors since it opened in May 2000 Tate Modern has become the most visited modern art gallery in the world

Waterstone’s Piccadilly London’s largest bookshop claims to be Europe’s biggest, 6 floors, over 8 miles of shelves, with over 200,000 titles

On 27 May 1851 German Adolf Anderssen won the first International Chess Master Tournament which was held in London winning £335

As Princess Elizabeth, the Queen travelled on the Underground for the first time in May 1939, when she was 13 years old, with her governess Marion Crawford and Princess Margaret

One of the Crossrail tunnelling machines is named Phyllis, in honour of Phyllis Pearsall who invented London’s A to Z map

London’s Camden Square has twice returned Britain’s highest recorded temperatures May 1949 – 29.4C and in June 1957 – 35.6C

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.