London
Why is This Medieval Skeleton Wearing Thigh-High Boots?
These boots were made for walking—and surviving the ravages of time. In London, archaeologists discovered the 500-year-old skeleton of a man lying face down in the mud of the River Thames, wearing thigh-high leather boots that were basically still intact. The boots date to the ...read more
Terrorists attack London Bridge
During one horrific 8-minute period on June 3, 2017, eight people were killed as a band of terrorists drove a van through a pedestrian walkway on the London Bridge. The men then exited, armed with pink steak knives, and proceeded to slash and stab people in a nearby market. The ...read more
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey is one of the most famous religious buildings in the world, and it has served an important role in British political, social and cultural affairs for more than 1,000 years. In spite of its name, the facility is no longer an abbey, and while it still hosts ...read more
Tower of London
The Tower of London is one of the world’s oldest and most famous prisons, though its original purpose was not to house criminals. In fact, the Tower, which is actually a complex of several towers and structures, was built in the latter part of the 11th century as fortress to ...read more
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace is the London home and the administrative center of the British royal family. The enormous building and extensive gardens are an important site of ceremonial and political affairs in the United Kingdom, as well as a major tourist attraction. But for a monarchy ...read more
First Statue of a Woman to be Erected in Parliament Square
Criado-Perez’s campaign kicked off last year with an open letter to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. She called on Khan to erect a statue of a woman in Parliament Square by February 2018, to honor the 100th anniversary of legislation granting limited suffrage to British women. ...read more
Where is Matthew Flinders’ Body?
Today, visitors to Australia will spot Matthew Flinders’ name in all sorts of places, from Flinders Station in Melbourne to the town of Flinders in Victoria. Such tributes make sense, when you consider Flinders is the one who gave Australia its name. As master of the HMS ...read more
How did Big Ben get its name?
Big Ben is one of the most iconic—and misidentified—landmarks in the world. The name initially referred not to the distinctive 320-foot-high clock tower on the north side of the British Houses of Parliament, renamed the Elizabeth Tower in honor of Queen Elizabeth II during her ...read more
How London Bridge Ended Up In Arizona
In the early 1960s, officials in England made a troubling discovery: London Bridge was falling down. The 1,000-foot span had stood for over 130 years and survived strafing during World War II’s London Blitz, but it was unequipped for modern traffic and was slowly sinking into the ...read more
When London Burned: 1666’s Great Fire
London had already burned several times in its history, most notably in 1212, but in September 1666 the conditions were present for an inferno of epic proportions. The city of 500,000 people was a tinderbox of cramped streets and timber-frame structures, many of them built with ...read more
The Man Who Stole the Crown Jewels
The threat of the noose would have been enough to deter most thieves from attempting something as audacious as stealing the Crown Jewels, but “Colonel” Thomas Blood was no ordinary thief. By the time he set his sights on nabbing the royal regalia, the Irish adventurer had amassed ...read more
The London Beer Flood
Late on the Monday afternoon of October 17, 1814, distraught Anne Saville mourned over the body of her 2-year-old son, John, who had died the previous day. In her cellar apartment in London’s St. Giles neighborhood, fellow Irishwomen offered comfort as they waked the small boy ...read more
Was Sherlock Holmes based on a real person?
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective with the knack for solving crimes through observation and reason was modeled after Dr. Joseph Bell, one of Conan Doyle’s medical school professors. Conan Doyle, born in Scotland in 1859, studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh ...read more
London’s World War I Zeppelin Terror
As London settled in to sleep on May 31, 1915, a monstrous airborne machine blotted out the stars of the British night. Using the glow of the River Thames as a guide, the biggest flying vessel ever constructed droned over the city. As a trap door opened from underneath the ...read more
10 Things You May Not Know About London’s Underground
1. The first Underground trains ran on steam. Recent studies have found that London’s air quality below ground is 70 times worse than it is above, and that, due to exhaust and poor ventilation, a 40-minute ride on the system is equivalent to smoking two cigarettes. This may shock ...read more
The Great Smog of 1952
The Great Smog Begins Clear skies dawned over London on December 5, 1952. A wintry cold snap had gripped the British capital for weeks, and as Londoners awoke, coal fireplaces were stoked in homes and businesses across the city to take the chill from the early morning air. As ...read more
6 Famous Prisoners of the Tower of London
1. Anne Boleyn The second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn was twice a resident of the Tower of London—once as a queen-in-waiting and once as a condemned prisoner. Boleyn married Henry in 1533 after the English king defied the Roman Catholic Church and annulled his marriage to ...read more
17th-Century Londoners Died of Fright, Itch and Grief
Life was hard for 17th-century Londoners—and death came both often and mysteriously. Nowhere is this more apparent than in John Graunt’s “Natural and Political Observations Made Upon the Bills of Mortality,” a groundbreaking vital statistics text that helped launch modern ...read more
Panic on the Streets of London: A History
Evil May Day (1517) The first of May was a day of celebration and public revelry during the reign of Henry VIII, but in 1517 it witnessed a xenophobic riot on the streets of London. Two weeks earlier, a preacher by the name of Dr. Bell had given an inflammatory speech urging ...read more
The death of Guy Fawkes
At Westminster in London, Guy Fawkes, a chief conspirator in the plot to blow up the British Parliament building, jumps to his death moments before his execution for treason. On the eve of a general parliamentary session scheduled for November 5, 1605, Sir Thomas Knyvet, a ...read more
Terrorists attack London transit system at rush hour
On the morning of July 7, 2005, bombs are detonated in three crowded London subways and one bus during the peak of the city’s rush hour. The synchronized suicide bombings, which were thought to be the work of al-Qaida, killed 56 people including the bombers and injured another ...read more
St. Paul’s Cathedral bombed
During the Battle of Britain, the German Luftwaffe launches a heavy nighttime air raid on London. The dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral was pierced by a Nazi bomb, leaving the high altar in ruin. It was one of the few occasions that the 17th-century cathedral suffered significant ...read more
Great Fire of London begins
In the early morning hours, the Great Fire of London breaks out in the house of King Charles II’s baker on Pudding Lane near London Bridge. It soon spread to Thames Street, where warehouses filled with combustibles and a strong easterly wind transformed the blaze into an inferno. ...read more
Bombers attempt to attack London transit system
On July 21, 2005, terrorists attempt to attack the London transit system by planting bombs on three subways and on one bus; none of the bombs detonate completely. The attempted attack came exactly two weeks after terrorists killed 56 people, including themselves, and wounded 700 ...read more