On 25 May 1850, Obaysch the hippopotamus arrived in London, the first since Roman times. He proved very popular and in 1871 fathered London’s Zoo first baby hippo. Obaysch once escaped from captivity and according to legend, a keeper was used as bait to lure him back into his enclosure.

On 25 May 1967 in London John Lennon wheeled out his new psychedelic Phantom, at Rolls Royce they said the £1,000 paint job was unfortunate

Under the 1752 Murder Act: The Company of Surgeons, Barts and St Thomas Hospitals were each entitled to 10 hanged corpses a year

The glazed-iron roof of Royal Albert Hall measures 20,000 sq.ft. and was at the time of building the largest unsupported glass dome in the world

In Westminster Bridge Road is the entrance to an old station from where passengers took their last journey to Brookwood Cemetery

Within 2 years from the start of World War II twenty-six per cent of London’s pets were destroyed, a quarter of a mile queue formed outside a Wood Green vets

The leather for Lady Penelope’s Thunderbirds limousine came from Bridge Weir Leather, the same company that upholsters Parliament’s benches

The short Holywell Street was the centre for the Victorian gay porn trade, with an estimated 57 pornography shops in as many yards

The museum at Lord’s Long Room has a perfume jar containing the original Ashes, and a stuffed sparrow bowled out in 1936 by Jehangir Khan

The longest journey in a car (1988 Volkswagon Scirocco) powered by coffee was from London to Manchester (337km) in March 2010

South Bank’s Anchor Brewery, once the largest brewery in the world, all that remains is the old brewery tap the Anchor Tavern on Park Street

Dukes Hotel, once part of St. James’s Palace, has knee height locks on doors because the staff used to have to enter and exit whilst bowing

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 18 May 1921, the erection of a commercial airship mooring-mast started at Croydon Airport. When completed the R33 would be anchored on it for experimental purposes. British rigid airships were built for the Royal Naval Air Service during the First World War.

On 18 May 1955 the country’s first Wimpy Bar opened in London, hailed as the birth of fast food conveniently forgetting about fish and chips

In 1678 the body of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was found on Greenberry Hill later three were hanged for the murder their names Green, Berry, Hill

The stainless steel box in the middle of a traffic island in Elephant & Castle commemorates local scientist Michael Faraday

Britain’s first fatal car crash took place on Grove Hill, Harrow. Today a plaque on the spot warns drivers to take heed

Thatcher used to stand on a chair in her Commons room to check the top of the door. ‘It’s the way you know if a room’s really been cleaned.’

Douglas Adams based characters of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe on Islington where he lived, Hotblack Desiato was an estate agent

The Apollo 11 crew’s first alcoholic drink back on Earth was the Moonwalk, invented by Joe Gilmore of London’s Savoy hotel

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

Demonstrating a new crossing in Camden aimed at reducing pedestrian road deaths Transport Minister Hore-Belisha was nearly knocked down

Many of the streets in the city were named after the particular trade which practiced there, for example Threadneedle Street was the tailor’s district

When John Noakes climbed Nelson’s Column (removing pigeon poo) for TV’s Blue Peter a sound engineer didn’t record the stunt, Noakes had to reclimb all over again

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 11 May 1812 Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, entered the lobby of the House of Commons and was shot dead by a merchant, John Bellingham. John Bellingham was hanged at Newgate on 18 May, two days after Perceval’s funeral.

On 11 May 1937 London’s busmen went on strike they wanted an enquiry on the dangers of the new buses which travelled at 30mph instead of the sedate 12mph they were used to

When Julian Assange was holed up at the Ecuadorian Embassy those visiting included Pamela Anderson, Lady Gaga, Eric Cantona and Nigel Farage

On Knight’s Road in Docklands, the world’s largest tin of syrup is affixed to Tate & Lyle’s factory producing the world’s oldest branded product

The finest dentures of 19th-century London contained real human teeth, some gleaned from casualties of the Battle of Waterloo

The Wiener Library, Russell Square contains 1 million items relating to the Holocaust, it is the world’s oldest library of related material

Now charmingly inaccurate, the life-sized models of dinosaurs in Crystal Palace Park, constructed in the 1850s were the first in the world

The basement at 27 Endell Street was once the animal depot for West End theatres once 2 bulls escaped liberating a menagerie on Soho streets

Mitcham Cricket Club has played on the world’s oldest cricket pitch since 1685, and today is still an active cricket club

Amersham is the second most westerly tube station, the highest at 147 metres above sea level and the second furthest Underground station from central London

Burrell & Co on Blasker Walk in Docklands once manufactured dyes, red smoke from the chimneys would tint the local pigeons rose-pink

Wartime song A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square was almost certainly a robin, the only town bird known to sing at night

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 May 2008, Boris Johnson beat his rival Ken Livingstone and assumed control at City Hall. His candidacy was the object of national and international scrutiny. David Cameron had commented, ‘I don’t always agree with him, but I respect the fact that he’s absolutely his own man’.

On 4 May 1913 the annual exhibition of flowers by the Royal Horticultural Society was held for the first time in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea

Forty Elephants were a gang of prolific female shoplifters from the 1920s who stashed stolen goods in specially adapted bloomers

London’s railings used to be brightly coloured. On the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria decreed that they all be painted black

In his will Dickens stipulated that no monuments be erected to his memory, that’s why London has no statues of one of its greatest writers

The American Declaration of Independence was printed in Caslon typeface designed in Chiswell Street by William Caslon, it’s now a Tesco

In 17th century London antics in St. James’s Park were put to verse: ‘Nightly now beneath their shade/Are buggeries, rapes and incests made’

Opening in 1910 with 2,286 seats the London Palladium had its own telephone system, so patrons could talk to each other

A white strip near BBC White City marks the finish of the world’s first modern marathon in 1908 originally 25 miles extended to 26 miles 385 yards

Traffic congestion in 18th century led to a law being passed to make all traffic on London Bridge keep to the left in order to reduce collisions, it was incorporated into the Highway Act of 1835

On 4 May 1896 the Daily Mail, at 1⁄2d a copy, devised by Alfred and Harold Harmsworth, was first published, the planned print run of 100,000 for the first day became 397,215!

Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre dubbed ‘Piccadilly Circus of South London’, Europe’s first covered mall was voted London’s biggest eyesore

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 April 1831 Apsley House, the London home of the Duke of Wellington, was targeted by ‘an unruly and indecent mob’ incensed by his opposition to the Reform Bill. They ‘broke the windows … and he caused to be put up those blinds which remain to this day as a record of the people’s ingratitude’.

On 27 April 1970 actor Tony Curtis was caught in possession of cannabis at Heathrow Airport and fined £50. He had flown in to star alongside Roger Moore in the long-running series The Persuaders

One for the Road and On the Waggon derive from condemned prisoners going to Tyburn being given a drink at the Angel PH St Giles High Street

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

St George’s Hospital has a cowhide belonging to Blossom who gave cowpox to Sarah Nelmes in 1796 Jenner developed smallpox vaccine from virus

The clock at Horse Guards has a black square on the dial denoting the time King Charles I was executed outside Banqueting House opposite

The location shots in the 1950s film Passport to Pimlico were shot not in affluent Pimlico but poorer Lambeth and Vauxhall in south London

On 27 April 1828 the Zoological Gardens at Regent’s Park opened, it was originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study, the zoo didn’t open to the public until 1847

In 1895, an American visitor demonstrated a new type of basketball where the girls played with wastepaper baskets at both ends of the hall

The first man ever to fly from London to Manchester did so by following the whitewashed sleepers of the London and North Western Railway

Established in 1805 Truefitt and Hill of St. James’s Street remains the world’s oldest barbershop having served nine consecutive Monarchs

Only members of the Royal Family are allowed to drive through the central arch at Horse Guards – Kate Middleton did so after her marriage

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.