Monday Miscellanea

Dave Haste
By Dave Haste Last edited 199 months ago
Monday Miscellanea
Pooh

This Week In London’s History

  • Monday20th August 1989: The Marchioness pleasure boat collides with the dredger Bowbelle under Cannon Street Railway Bridge, causing the Marchioness to sink rapidly. 51 of the pleasure boat’s 132 passengers drown.
  • Tuesday21st August 1920: A boy who would be named Christopher Robin Milne is born in Chelsea, West London. His father, the author A. A. Milne, would use him as inspiration for the Christopher Robin character in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. Aaah. Wednesday22nd August 1964: Iconic football programme Match of the Day is screened for the first time, covering a 3-2 defeat of Arsenal by Liverpool. It is aired at 6:30pm on BBC Two, and thus generally only available to London viewers – as the channel would not become available outside the capital until some time later. Thursday23rd August 1940: What is described as the “first all-night bombing raid on London” during the Second World War takes place, paving the way for tit-for-tat retaliation and The Blitz. Friday24th August 1931: At Westminster, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald submits the formal resignation of the Labour government, which would be replaced by the National Government.

    Random London Fact Of The Week

    There are about 3,800 pubs in London (or at least there were in 2003, when the statistical Tefal-heads last counted them all). This may sound like a lot, but in fact it is apparently only 9% of the UK’s public houses. With London’s population at 7.7 million, or almost 13% of the UK’s population, it is clear that London has less-pubs-per-punter than the rest of the country.

    Let’s put this another way. If every London resident decided to pop down the pub for a cheeky one this evening, each pub in London would (on average) have to serve 2026 people. We can think of few London pubs that are particularly well equipped to deal with this unprecedented level of custom. It’s almost inevitable that some drinkers would end up disappointed. (It might almost be as bad as trying to get served in the Edinboro Castle.)

    On the positive side, it would not take much more then 10 years to visit every pub in London, at a decidedly non-hangover-inducing rate of one pub per day. However you would probably end up spending almost as much time on public transport as you would sampling the beers, especially when visiting some of the more far-flung London establishments.

    Londonist failed statistics at school.

    London’s Weather This Week

    Once again, the forecasters cannot really agree on the exact details of this week’s weather. Sure, there will be rain. And probably some sunshine. But no-one seems to know what order they’ll arrive in. Either way, it’ll probably be a bit colder than it should be. Sorry.

    Picture taken from +fatman+’s Flickr photostream under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 licence.

    Last Updated 20 August 2007