This Week In London’s History
- Monday – 28th 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.
- Tuesday – 1st March 1826: Chunee, a tame elephant at Cross's Menagerie on the Strand, is executed in a barbaric manner.
- Wednesday – 2nd March 1717: The Theatre Royal Drury Lane hosts The Loves of Mars and Venus, the first ballet to be staged in Britain.
- Thursday – 3rd March 1982: The Barbican Centre is opened by the Queen. After 15 years of construction, at a cost of £161 million, the centre would become the largest performing arts centre in Europe (as well as being voted the ugliest building in London).
- Friday – 4th March 1882: Britain’s first electric trams go into operation in Leytonstone, East London.
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
Picture by Martin H via the Londonist Flickr Pool.