This Week In London’s History
- Monday – 2 December 1697: The first service is held in Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral, some eleven years before the building is officially completed.
- Tuesday – 3 December 1952: Mel Smith is born in Chiswick. He would become a successful comic performer and writer, known for his involvement in late 70s and 80s shows 'Not the Nine O'Clock News' and 'Alas Smith and Jones'.
- Wednesday – 4 December 1882: The Royal Courts of Justice on The Strand are opened by Queen Victoria.
- Thursday – 5 December 1952: The 'Great Smog of 1952', also known as 'The Big Smoke', descends upon London. It would last for about five days, and be later assessed as the worst recorded incident of air pollution in the UK's history.
- Friday – 6 December 1983: Britain’s first heart and lung transplant operation takes place at Harefield Hospital in Uxbridge, west London. The operation goes well, but sadly the patient would die 13 days later.
Random London Quote Of The Week
I came to London. It had become the centre of my world and I had worked hard to come to it. And I was lost. London was not the centre of my world. I had been misled; but there was nowhere else to go. It was a good place for getting lost in, a city no one ever knew, a city explored from the neutral heart outwards until, after years, it defined itself into a jumble of clearings separated by stretches of the unknown, through which the narrowest of paths had been cut.
V.S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness
Photo by Susanna via the Londonist Flickr Pool.
