Monday Miscellanea

This Week In London’s History

Monday – 9th June 1958: Queen Elizabeth II flies into a revamped Gatwick to officially open London’s second biggest airport.

Tuesday – 10th June 2000: The Millennium Footbridge opens, spanning the Thames between Bankside and the City. It would initially suffer from ‘synchronous lateral excitation’ (a.k.a. wobbliness), necessitating its closure and the fitting of dampers. Wednesday – 11th June 1988: The Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute (a.k.a. Mandela Day Concert) takes place at Wembley Stadium. More than 600 million people worldwide tune in to watch the epic day-long concert. Thursday – 12th June 1991: The Outrage! gay rights group stage a mass ‘queer wedding’ in Trafalgar Square to demand equal rights for same-sex partners as for married couples. Friday – 13th June 1981: Teenager Marcus Sarjeant fires six blank shots at the Queen during the Trooping the Colour ceremony. The Queen is unharmed, and Sarjeant is later imprisoned for treason.

Random London Fact Of The Week

There are several pubs in the West End that go by the name ‘The Blue Posts’. These pubs are supposedly named after actual blue posts that once marked the boundaries of the old hunting ground that gave its name to Soho (‘soho!’ being an old hunting call).

If you fancy a pub crawl to check out these establishments for yourself, the pubs can be found on Newman Street, Berwick Street, Rupert Street, Kingly Street and Bennett Street (just off St. James’s Street).

London’s Weather This Week

Forecasters are promising a fair amount of sunshine for the first half of the week. Make the most of it, as the rain is set to return as the week progresses.

Picture taken from brockleyboyo’s Flickr photostream under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 license.