Monday Miscellanea

This Week In London’s History

Monday – 8th October 1965: The Post Office Tower (now known as the BT Tower) in Fitzrovia becomes operational as a major hub for national microwave telecommunications. Today it is the only building in the UK that is legally allowed to be evacuated using its lifts.

Tuesday – 9th October 1975: An IRA bomb explodes at a bus stop near Green Park tube station, killing one person and injuring many others. Wednesday – 10th October 1881: The Savoy Theatre is opened on the Strand, becoming the first public building in the world to be entirely lit by electricity. Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience is the first performance to be hosted at the new theatre. Thursday – 11th October 1573: Sir John Hawkins, Treasurer of the Royal Navy, suffers an assassination attempt whilst riding down the Strand. The would-be assassin, one Peter Burchett, stabs Hawkins, mistaking him for Sir Christopher Hatton. Despite being severely injured by the attack, Hawkins would survive. The same could not be said for Burchett, who would be hanged near the place of the attack. Friday – 12th October 1609: London composer Thomas Ravencroft publishes an early version of what would become the nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice.

Random London Fact Of The Week

In 1924, a conman posing as a civil servant attempted to sell Nelson’s Column to an American businessman. The trickster – a Scotsman named Arthur Ferguson – managed to extract a deposit of £6000 from the businessman, whom he met in Trafalgar Square (appropriately enough). Unsurprisingly, the businessmen never managed to take delivery of the monument.

Deciding that taking money from gullible tourists was an extremely profitable way to make a living, Ferguson went on to ‘sell’ Big Ben and Buckingham Palace, before moving to the US and attempting to ply his trade there.

Despite managing to ‘sell’ the White House to a rancher, Ferguson came unstuck in the land of opportunity when an Australian tourist became suspicious about a purchase plan for the Statue of Liberty and contacted the police. He was resultantly imprisoned for five years, but continued his tricksy ways on being released, successfully profiting from the stupidity of others until his death in 1938.

London’s Weather This Week

The forecasters seem to think that this week will be fairly mild, but probably quite rainy in the middle. Pretty much ‘autumnal’, then…

Picture of the BT Tower taken from tarotastic’s Flickr photostream under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 licence.