How Just About Everything Was Invented In London

If you're eating a tin of beans in a public lavatory while wearing rubber gloves and a miniskirt, you've probably got a seriously deviant mind. Either that, or you're celebrating the innovative spirit of London, which can lay claim to these and many other discoveries and inventions.Over the years, London's sharpest minds have given the world everything from the jigsaw puzzle to the nuclear chain reaction. Plotting these breakthroughs on a map yields some interesting results. Who knew, for example, that the sports of modern football and cycling were initiated just metres from one another on Long Acre? That fashion shows and in-line roller skating were first attempted in the same square? Or that 'trendy' Hoxton Square was home to the humble tin can?As with any of our maps, this is a work in progress and could be greatly improved by your suggestions, corrections and additions in the comments below. South London, in particular, is looking nonchalantly uninventive right now. Note also that a fair few of the points on the map refer to one of several possible inventors of a given technology - in innovation, it seems, rival claims are the norm rather than the exception.