Monday Miscellanea

Dave Haste
By Dave Haste Last edited 200 months ago
Monday Miscellanea
Live Aid mural

This Week In London’s History

  • Monday9th July 1968: The Hayward art gallery on the South Bank is opened by the Queen.
  • Tuesday10th July 1958: Britain’s first parking meters are installed in Mayfair. Soon there would be 625 of them in the district, charging 6 pence per hour. Wednesday11th July 1848: Waterloo Station is opened. The original station would survive just 52 years until 1900, when it would be demolished and rebuilt to form the Waterloo mainline station that we know today. Thursday12th July 1543: Henry VIII marries Catherine Parr in the last of his six marriages. Friday13th July 1985: Wembley Stadium hosts the colossal Live Aid concert (along with the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia and several other less high-profile venues). An estimated 1.5 billion people from more than 100 countries watch the concert’s live television broadcast.

    Random London Fact Of The Week

    The Freedom of the City of London is granted to about 1800 people every year. These ‘Freemen’ receive a book entitled Rules for the Conduct of Life, which was written by the Lord Mayor in the 18th century. They also receive certain rights, many of which are now somewhat out-of-date, including: the right to drive sheep and cattle over London Bridge; the right to carry a drawn sword in public; and preferential admission for their children at a couple of rather exclusive independent schools in the City.

    Sadly, Freemen of the City of London are no longer immune from prosecution for being drunk and disorderly, as they once were.

    One Thing You Must Do In London This Week

    If you’ve got some time to spare this Friday afternoon, and you’re in (or can easily get to) the Waterloo area, and you’re not being a silly superstitious scaredy-cat and spending your entire day hiding under the bed because it’s yet another Friday 13th (or is that just us?), then you could do worse than strolling down to Lower Marsh to check out the Waterloo Carnival 2007. To quote the blurb:

    From 12-6pm, visitors can enjoy live entertainment by Valentinos Street Band and top Cuban salsa band Son de Havana, street performers and a salsa stage outside Cubana and Sino Thai, while browsing the special market featuring exotic fresh food, drinks and smoothies and gifts. Afterwards, from 6pm there will be a street party, entertainment, puppetry and live music along Lower Marsh and outside Scooterworks, to take you into the evening.

    Even if the ‘official’ festivities turn out to be a bit naff, there are quite a few interesting shops, bars and eateries in that area (either on Lower Marsh, or on The Cut on the other side of Waterloo Road), so it’s worth a visit anyway. More info here.

    London’s Weather This Week

    Well we finally had some respite from the ongoing rainy stupidity last weekend. And although we’re being fairly cautious here in case we tempt fate, the weekend might finally herald some slightly more summer-like weather – some forecasters seem to think that the ridiculous rain might be punctuated by a bit more sunshine than we saw last week. As usual please blame the forecasters, and not us, if this turns out to be completely inaccurate.

    Picture of the Live Aid mural near Wembley Park station taken from the one and only diamond geezer’s Flickr photostream under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

    Last Updated 09 July 2007