This Week In London’s History
- Monday – 14 January 1437: The 'Great Stone Gate' at the south side of London Bridge collapses, taking down two bridge arches and several houses with it.
- Tuesday – 15 January 1867: The ice on Regent’s Park Lake gives way while hundreds of people are skating on it. Dozens drown.
- Wednesday – 16 January 1599: Poet Laureate Edmund Spenser is buried in Westminster. His coffin is borne by other poets of the time, who cast poetry and pens into the grave.
- Thursday – 17 January 1997: At the Old Bailey, a jury decides that Szymon Serafinowicz, the first man to be charged under the 1991 War Crimes Act, is medically unfit to stand trial.
- Friday – 18 January 1882: Alan Alexander Milne is born in Hampstead, north London. He would become known as successful author A. A. Milne, most notably for his Winnie-the-Pooh books.
Random London Quote Of The Week
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
T. S. Elliot
Picture by SabineThoele via the Londonist Flickr Pool.
