Monday Miscellanea

By · May 25, 2009 at 8:00 am · No comments · Miscellaneous · Report an error ·

big-ben-clouds.jpg
Picture by Nick Holdstock via the Londonist Flickr pool.

This Week In London’s History

  • Monday – 25th May 1878: The first ever performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘H.M.S. Pinafore’ takes place at the Opera Comique on The Strand.

  • Tuesday – 26th May 1868: Michael Barrett, having been found guilty of involvement with a bombing in Clerkenwell, is hanged outside the walls of Newgate Prison. He would become the last man to be publicly hanged in Britain.

  • Wednesday – 27th May 2005: The Great Clock of Westminster (a.k.a. Big Ben) unexpectedly stops at 10:07pm. It restarts, but then stops again at 10:20pm for about 90 minutes. The malfunction is blamed on unseasonably high temperatures.

  • Thursday – 28th May 1908: Ian Fleming, creator of the character of James Bond and author of more than a dozen novels featuring the British agent (as well as ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’), is born in Mayfair.

  • Friday – 29th May 1886: The current Putney Bridge is opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales, replacing an earlier bridge that was built in 1729.

    • Random London Quote Of The Week

    I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air – or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought.

    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

    Londoner Of The Week

    Hats off to has-been one-time ‘Nutty Boy’ Suggs for choosing a gem of historical London geekery to promote his band’s new album. Whether or not the 8.7 acres of land between Bishopsgate and Shoreditch are successfully re-established as an independent district (complete with its own parliament) remains to be seen.

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