This Week In London’s History
- Monday – 21st March 1962: Driverless tube trains are demonstrated in South Ealing.
- Tuesday – 22nd March 1954: The London Bullion Market reopens after 15 years of closure.
- Wednesday – 23rd March 1861: London’s first tramway is opened, running about a mile along Bayswater Road between Marble Arch and Notting Hill. The horse-drawn trams, introduced by the appropriately-named George Francis Train, would be superseded by electric trams some forty years later.
- Thursday – 24th March 1603: Following the death of Elizabeth I at Richmond Palace, James VI, King of Scots, is proclaimed James I, King of England.
- Friday – 25th March 1950: A team of Norwegian skiers construct a full-size ski jump from 45 tonnes of imported real snow and 60 feet of scaffolding on Hampstead Heath.
London Quote Of The Week
If the parks be the lungs of London, we wonder what Greenwich Fair is – a periodical breaking-out, we suppose; a sort of spring rash; a three days' fever, which cools the blood for six months afterwards, and at the expiration of which London is restored to its old habit of plodding industry as suddenly and as completely as if nothing had ever occurred to disturb them.
Charles Dickens, Greenwich Fair
Picture by EUROVIZION via the Londonist Flickr Pool.
