This Week In London’s History
- Monday – 16th July 1924: Crowds of photographers, reporters and ‘autograph seekers’ greet the pilots of the first (successful) round-the-world flight as it landed at Croydon airport for its London stopover.
- Tuesday – 17th July 1974: A bomb explodes in a tourist-packed room of the Tower of London, killing one person and injuring 41 others. No-one claims responsibility for the bombing, and no culprits are found.
- Wednesday – 18th July 1922: IRA gunmen Reginald Dunne and Joseph O’Sullivan are sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for the murder of Sir Henry Wilson, who was shot in the back nine times one month earlier.
- Thursday – 19th July 1932: The current Lambeth Bridge is opened by George V, replacing an earlier suspension bridge that was awkward to use and in a state of disrepair.
- Friday – 20th July 1982: IRA nail bombs explode in Hyde Park and Regents Park, resulting in the death of 11 people and injury to 50 more. Seven horses from the Household Cavalry also die as a result of the attacks.
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
Photo by McTumshie via the Londonist Flickr Pool.
