On 20 May 1867 Queen Victoria laid the first stone of the The Royal Albert Hall. Originally it was given he catchy nomenclature `The Hall of Arts and Sciences` which to Victorian ears tripped off the tongue nicely. Her Majesty was having none of it and to our eternal gratitude insisted it be named after her late husband. It was the first building to be built top down, the dome was assembled in Manchester taken apart and transported to London.

On 20 May 1913 the Royal Horticultural Society having been forced to relocate from Temple Gardens chose the Royal Hospital Chelsea attracting 200,000 in its first year

Journalists known as running patterers went to executions to record the executed’s last words, they then printed and sold exaggerated versions

10 Hyde Park Place is London’s smallest house: 3’6″ wide constructed in 1805, it has only ever had one tenant

Constitution Hill’s name is nothing to do with the constitution – it’s because it’s where Charles II took his daily constitutional

When Soviet spy Guy Burgess lived at 38 Chester Square, Lower Belgravia he cunningly decorated his flat in red, white and blue

Hitchcock’s first film The Lodger – 1926 had him making a cameo on the Tube now the Underground’s Film Office handles over 200 requests a month

Gordon’s Wine Bar reputed to be the oldest in London, in the same building that was home to Samuel Pepys in 1680 and is owned by the Gordons family since 1890

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

The total length of the London Underground network is 250 miles; Tube trains travelled 76.4 million kilometres last year

When the south portico of the British Museum was built the colour of the limestone didn’t match, builders used French limestone not English

There is a 19th century time capsule under Cleopatra’s Needle containing money, a rail guide and portraits of ‘pretty English ladies’

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 13 May 1986 Leo Abse, MP and solicitor made legal history exercising his Right of Audience in the High Court. He was the first solicitor able to break through the glass ceiling ending the centuries-old tradition of the barristers’ monopoly representing clients in the High Court. No MP ever claimed a more ancient lineage, unlike the Ashkenazi Jews his name was not shared by any other family of Jews in Europe and was Phoenician in origin.

On 13 May 1842 Arthur Sullivan was born in Lambeth, with his partner Gilbert they wrote 14 comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado are among the best known

The Clink a small prison whose name entered the English language as slang term for gaol, the prison was for those who ran amok in Bankside’s brothels

Strand was the first road in London to have a numbered address Charles II’s Secretary of State residence was No 1 near Northumberland Avenue

Florence Nightingale’s statue outside St Thomas’s Hospital is a glass-fibre copy as the original was stolen in 1970

Near The Houses of Parliament the Silver Cross public house is a licensed brothel as the privilege granted by Charles I hasn’t been revoked

Both Samuel Pepys and Rudyard Kipling both once lived at 47 Villiers Street, Strand now it is Gordon’s Wine Bar

Harrods installed its first escalator in 1898 and dispensed brandy to gentlemen and Epsom Salts for ladies to help the shock of its movement

London’s oldest sporting-related pavilion is at Syon House, built in 1803 by the Duke of Northumberland so his wife could watch regattas in comfort

The River Westbourne was funnelled above a platform on Sloane Square in a large iron pipe suspended from girders. It remains in place today

The original Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair was founded by Lord Byron’s butler, James Brown recently refurbished and is now owned by Rocco Forte

The largest clock in London is not situated on St Stephens Tower (Big Ben) but on the Shell Mex House which is on the Strand

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 6 May 1902 the last hanging was enacted at Newgate Prison. Aware of the extortionate cost of stringing up criminals, the apparatus was moved to Pentonville for future use. The last to avail themselves of this fine piece of engineering was George Woolfe, for the murder of Charlotte Cheeseman. The scaffold didn’t go to waste, 121 men were hanged at Pentonville the final execution at took place on 6 July 1961.

On 6 May 1990 after changing names for numbers, then adding the prefix 01, eventually 071 and 081 were introduced on this day, before going on to add 020

In May 1760 Earl of Ferrers became the only peer to be hanged for murder, wearing his wedding suit and taken in his carriage from the Tower to Tyburn

A small section of the old London Wall survives in the trackside walls of Tower Hill station at platform level. One of the largest pieces of the wall also stands just outside this station

When the Bishop’s Geese-prostitutes-had ‘goose bumps’ it did not mean they were cold or scared but had unfortunately caught venereal disease

The Royal Observatory, home of Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian line, was founded by Charles II in 1675

The folk tune London Bridge is Falling Down refers to Norwegian King Olaf who suggested destroying the wooden bridge while occupied by Danes

Buck’s Club, the London gentlemen’s club which once boasted Churchill as a member, is where the Buck’s Fizz was invented

London Marathon’s youngest male winner was 22-year-old Kenyan Sammy Wanjiru in 2009, he died two years later after falling from a balcony

The escalator at Angel station is not only the longest on the Tube network, but the longest anywhere in Western Europe

When Sir Christopher Wren his and craftsmen took 35 years to rebuild St Paul’s Cathedral they were criticised for taking too long

In May 2013 London was deemed as the city with the most multi-millionaires more than in the whole of France (4,224 against 3,800)

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 April 1826 a public meeting was held chaired by Sir Stamford Raffles. Its purpose was to ascertain the viability of importing animals and putting them on display to the public. Sir Stamford had his reservations as to the zoo’s location “The Regent’s Park is to be the headquarters . . . though we do not know how the inhabitants of the Park will like lions, leopards and lynxes so near their neighbourhood”.

On 29 April 1968 after 139 years of operation the Metropolitan Police’s first black woman, Fay Allen (21) started work in Croydon

The term ‘down-under’ comes from a tunnel on Millbank which deported prisoners were led in chains to barges on their first leg to Australia

Chiswick House built to house Lord Burlington’s art collection became a lunatic asylum before being listed for demolition in the 1950s

In 1974 Cass Elliot died of a heart attack in Harry Nilsson’s Mayfair flat the same block that The Who drummer Keith Moon died 4 years later

The Lamb and Flag pub at St Christopher’s Place in the 19th century was reputed to be the haunt of anarchists

Naked statutes outside Zimbabwe House caused an outcry when unveiled in 1908 the building opposite replaced its windows with frosted glass

Pasqua Rosee a Sicilian servant first introduced coffee to London first to his master’s guests then in a shed by St Michael Cornhill in 1652

Set up in 1869 the Hurlingham Club originally hosted pigeon shooting before becoming a major venue for tennis

The longest tube journey one can take without changing trains is Epping to West Ruislip a distance of 34.1 miles

In April 1755 after 9 years work and payment of 1,500 guineas Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in London

Zizzi is French for willy at Zizzi’s on the Strand in April 2007 a man ran in took a knife jumped on a table dropped his trousers and cut off his penis

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 April 1760 history was made this day by Belgian Jean-Joseph Merlin. The instrument maker demonstrated his invention much loved by children ever since. At a masquerade at Carlisle House in Soho Square, while playing a violin he roller skated across the polished floor. Unfortunately he had not mastered the art of stopping – with or without – a violin and crashed into a large wall mirror severely injuring himself.

On 22 April 1884 an earthquake centred in Essex was felt by workmen at the top of Victoria Tower as it swayed 4 inches

On 22 April 1737 William Hicks Wallingford’s MP was attacked by highwayman Dick Turpin in a coach travelling to London through Epping Forest

Richard Rogers’ Lloyds building was completed in 1986 and Grade I listed in 2011, the youngest building ever to gain that level of protection

In Charterhouse Square are the remains of a monastery where monks prayed for the souls of those who died in the 1348 Black Death

Huguenots (French Protestants) fled to London in the 1680s because of religious persecution in France, with many settling in Spitalfields

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (he of Sherlock Holmes fame) once described Putney as the ‘cultural desert of South London’

The BBC’s Maida Vale Studios started life as Maida Vale Skating Palace and was the largest roller skating rink in the world

The highest temperature recorded at the London Marathon 21.7C degrees on 22 April 2007: coldest 13 years previously in 1994 at 7.6C degrees

Tufnell Park is named after landowner William Tufnell who’s manor (since demolished) stood on the site occupied by the Holloway Odeon

Before the BBC pips, Ruth Belville made a living by setting her chronometer at Greenwich, then touring London’s watchmakers selling the time

On Good Friday a bun is put on the ceiling of Bow’s Widow’s Son pub in memory of one baked by a widow for her drowned son

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.