Monday Miscellanea

Dave Haste
By Dave Haste Last edited 182 months ago
Monday Miscellanea

Silvertown explosion plaque This Week In London’s History

  • Monday - 19th January 1917: A fire breaks out at a munitions factory in Silvertown, East London, igniting some 50 tonnes of TNT. The resulting explosion kills 73 people, injures some 400 more, and damages as many as 70,000 buildings (including, reportedly, the Savoy Hotel in the West End).
  • Tuesday - 20th January 1265: The English parliament holds its first meeting, in Westminster Hall. Wednesday - 21st January 1976: Concorde’s first commercial service, from London to Bahrain (and Paris to Rio de Janeiro) commences. Thursday - 22nd January 1876: The Royal Aquarium opens in Westminster. It would be demolished just 26 years later and replaced by the Methodist Central Hall. Friday - 23rd January 1571: The Royal Exchange in the City of London is officially opened by Elizabeth I. Over the next few hundred years it would be destroyed by fire (and rebuilt) twice.

    Random London Quote Of The Week

    It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent. You can draw up a tremendous list of reasons why it should be insupportable. The fogs, the smoke, the dirt, the darkness, the wet, the distances, the ugliness, the brutal size of the place, the horrible numerosity of society, the manner in which this senseless bigness is fatal to amenity, to convenience, to conversation, to good manners - all this and much more you may expatiate upon. You may call it dreary, heavy, stupid, dull, inhuman, vulgar at heart and tiresome in form. I have felt these things at times so strongly that I have said - ''Ah London, you too then are impossible?'' But these are occasional moods; and for one who takes it as I take it, London is on the whole the most possible form of life. I take it as an artist and as a bachelor; as one who has the passion of observation and whose business is the study of human life. It is the biggest aggregation of human life - the most complete compendium of the world.

    Henry James

    London’s Weather This Week

    Rain? Snow? Sunshine? The weather looks set to be fairly changeable this week, with only one constant - it will be cold.

    Picture taken from LoopZilla’s Flickr photostream under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike licence.

    Last Updated 19 January 2009