Sect. 5: London and New York Facts

London Facts

1.    London have unusual names, such as Ha Ha Road in Greenwich, Hooker's Road in Walthamstow, Quaggy Walk in Blackheath, and Cyclops Mews and Uamvar Street in Limehouse.

2.    Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital in the reading room at the British Museum while drinking and pursuing his close associate, Friedrich Engels, German socialist philosopher to lend him more money.

3.    Until 1994 the City of London had no 'Road', and now there's only one, Goswell Road.

4.    In 1907, Stalin, Lenin, and Trotsky had a meeting of the (banned) Russian Social Democratic Labour Party at the now demolished Brotherhood Church on Southgate Road in Hackney where Tesco Metro is situated now.

5.    One silliest law that still exists in London is that it’s illegal to die in the Palace of Westminster.

6.    London currently having more than 300 spoken languages, tops among all the cities in the world in this regard.

7.    There is a highly regarded superstition that if all the ravens leave the Tower, the kingdom will fall. So, at all times, at least six ravens are kept in the Tower of London, each raven with a wing clipped to ensure that they don’t fly away from the tower.

8.    The O2 Arena, in Greenwich, London, Millennium Dome is the largest structure of its kind in the world which can easily fit into it the Statue of Liberty or the Great Pyramid of Giza. Due to its expensive infrastructure, it is said to be London’s “White Elephant.”

9.    The world’s first traffic light was installed in the year 1868 in London at the junction of Great George St and Bridge St near Westminster Palace in London. However, it exploded after a month and the policeman who was operating it was severely hurt.

10.  The famous London Bridge as at present which was opened in 1973 is third one with the same name. The first one existed till 1831 while the second one till 1968.

11.  To get a license for a London cabbie is not so easy.  For this, one has to have knowledge of over 50,000 points of interest and 25,000 streets in London and pass a special test.

12.  The Shard, the 95 storey skyscraper in London standing at 309.6 meters is the tallest   building in the European Union.

13.  London hosted the Summer Olympics three times in 1908, 1948 and 2012 and became the first city to host the modern Olympic Games three times.

14.  The ring road in London, M25 covering a distance of 122 miles, is the largest orbital road in the world.

15.  More than a dozens of secret rivers are said to be flowing beneath London. One of them is Effra which flows under the Oval cricket ground.

16.  The London Underground, familiar as the Tube, is the oldest (dating back from 1863) and third longest metro system in the world, and also having  the world's first underground electric line.

 New York Facts