Monday Miscellanea

Dave Haste
By Dave Haste Last edited 203 months ago
Monday Miscellanea
The Admiral Duncan Pub in Soho

This Week In London’s History

  • Monday30th April 1999: “London nailbomber” David Copeland plants his last bomb, in the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho. Three people are killed and dozens are injured.
  • Tuesday1st May 2000: The May Day anti-capitalism protests bring mass violence and vandalism to central London. On the same day one year later, police detain thousands of protesters and unwitting bystanders in Oxford Circus for about 6 hours. Wednesday2nd May 1536: Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VII, is arrested on charges of adultery and taken to the Tower of London. Thursday3rd May 1951: The Royal Festival Hall is opened by George VI, as a part of the Festival of Britain. Friday4th May 2000: Ken Livingstone is elected the first Mayor of London.

    Random London Fact Of The Week

    According to The London Companion by Jo Swinnerton:

    In 1952 a Nigerian visitor to London was accused of committing an indecent act with a pigeon in Trafalgar Square. As the law at the time prevented only indecency with an animal, the defence attempted to put the case that a pigeon was not an animal. The judge disagreed. The accused was fined £50, and a further £10 for taking the pigeon home and eating it for dinner.

    Whatever you do, don’t tell Brian.

    London’s Weather This Week

    The good weather is going to continue this week, with plenty of sunshine in-between the clouds. The forecasters don’t seem to think there’s going to be much rain, if any, but it might get a bit chilly at night later in the week.

    One Thing You Must Do In London This Week

    Visit a museum in the evening. This is not as fruitless an exercise as you might think, as about a dozen of London’s most popular museums and galleries are participating in the ‘Lates’ season of “after-hours art and culture in London to be enjoyed at twilight, sundown or lights-out”, starting this week. At the time of writing there’s only a limited amount of information available on the lates.org website, but more detail is promised and the events look very promising indeed.

    One question though – as this is billed as a ‘Mayor of London’ initiative (at least according to the leaflet on the not-yet-finished website), why isn’t Ken’s office promoting this a bit more? To date we’ve heard very little about it, and it would be a shame for a promising initiative like this to suffer from a lack of public awareness…

    Picture taken from Secretlondon’s image on Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 1.0 License.

    Last Updated 30 April 2007