This Week In London’s History
- Monday – 24 February 1987: The London Daily News, a newspaper owned by Robert Maxwell, is launched. Intended to rival the Evening Standard, it would collapse just five months later.
- Tuesday – 25 February 1900: The first tube station to be known as ‘Bank’ is opened, effectively replacing the old ‘City’ station and providing a link between the Waterloo & City Railway and the newly extended City & South London Railway (now part of the Northern Line). At the same time, nearby King William Street station is closed.
- Wednesday – 26 February 1797: The Bank of England issues its first one-pound and two-pound notes.
- Thursday – 27 February 1900: The Labour Party is formed at the Memorial Hall on Farringdon Street.
- Friday – 28 February 1975: A southbound Northern Line train overshoots the end of the platform at Moorgate Station, accelerating into a dead-end tunnel and crashing into a hydraulic buffer and then a brick wall at about 40mph. 43 people die, and many more are severely injured.
London Quote Of The Week
All over London as one walks, one everywhere, in the season, sees oranges to sell; and they are in general sold tolerably cheap, one and even sometimes two for a halfpenny; or, in our money, threepence. At the play-house, however, they charged me sixpence for one orange, and that noways remarkably good.
Karl Philipp Moritz, 'Travels in England in 1782'
Photo by Adam Smith via the Londonist Flickr Pool.