Friday, October 4, 2024

London Calling

Here’s a bit of a flaneur around London.



The Royal Albert Hall in its original form had a terrible echo. Modern acoustics fixed it in such a way that the cheapest seats in the house get the best auditory experience.


Two ply toilet paper was invented in London.

London is also the smallest city in the world, yes I’m being devious here as the city of London is a distinct within Greater London. It has its own Police Force. This created some problems during the Jack the Ripper case. Famously this fact was used in the book A Certain Justice by PD James where a body is found in chambers and the body straddles the boundary between the jurisdiction of the city of London and the Metropolitan Police. As in horse racing its where the head is that counts. Unlike track running where it’s the chest that counts.




Only 5 people died in the great fire of London although it flattened 80% of the city. However, the great smog of London 1952 killed thousands with 100,000 suffering life changing after effects or sequela. This prompted the worlds very first clean air act.


Black cab drivers do a thing called the knowledge. It’s a brutal exam to pass, memorizing 300 routes and over 20,000 landmarks.



All the venomous animals were euthanised at London zoo during the second world war in case the zoo was bombed and the wee critters escaped. The blitz of 1940 created an inferno over a larger area than the great fire of London could ever have dreamed of.



Jimmy Hendrix lived and died in London. The house he died in was next door to the house that Handel died in.



London is the third most visited in the face of the planet after Bangkok and Paris. I thought New York would have been up there.




As you guys probably know Big Ben is the bell inside the tower. The tower is the Elizabeth tower and its on the north end of the palace of Westminster.

Winne the Poo was a real bear, she lived at London Zoo between 1914 and 1934. A certain author Mr Milne and his son Christopher used to visit.




One third of Londoners today were not born in Great Britain.

London has so many trees its officially a forest.



The London underground covers 270 miles. The iconic map was designed in 1933. He got paid £250 for doing it.




Our intrepid explorer found the tunnel that goes underneath the Thames, it goes back to the 1800s and is 1350 feet in length. It was rumoured to be the first tunnel successfully constructed under a ‘navigable river’.





During the height of Empire London was the capital of a land mass that was 22% of the Earth’s surface.




The prime meridian line, or Greenwich meantime is no longer where it should be, its not zero any more due to the movement of the earths crust it’s a bit to the east and is believed to be marked by a council bin. At least you have some chance of photographing that.




Thank you for our intrepid explorer for the pictures I was failing to meet a deadline.
 

Caro Ramsay

5 comments:

  1. Thank you for reminding me of so many sights I missed this week in London--as it rained every day I was there. I did pick up one interesting fact from one of the several Uber drivers I relied upon to keep my tootsies dry. We fell to talking about the different categories of taxis in London, and I mentioned how much I admired the Black Taxi drivers command of (via the Knowledge) the many ins and outs of London Streets. He laughed and said that's no longer meaningful because these day all taxis use Google maps or the like! ARGH, another romanticized belief wrecked for me by technology. :( Jeff

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, he's half right. The black cabs (turning circle of 25 feet) can get to all kinds of places that Google doesn't know about- wee short cuts etc. Black cabs can use bus lanes but Ubers can't. There's been a bit of a stooshie between the Ubers and the Black Cabs over the years!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ahh, thanks, Caro, for bringing back the romance!! Jeff

      Delete
  3. From AA: I love London and visit any chance I get. Re number of visitors, I guess it depends on what year they started counting. NYC was a newborn in 1620, when Shakespeare had already come a gone.

    BTW: I have a picture David took of me with the feet on either side of the "line." When did they discover that it was no longer correct?

    ReplyDelete