10 interesting facts about london
TRANSCRIPT
10 INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT
LONDON
Liana Vahanyan
1The oldest church in the city, All Hallows by the Tower, near Tower Hill,
was founded in 675. The undercroft has Roman
pavement dating from the 2nd century A.D.
2
London buses were not always red. Before 1907,
different routes had different-coloured
buses.
3London has not always had this
name. In the past it has been called Londonium, Ludenwic, and
Ludenburg!
4
Arsenal are the only football team in London to have a Tube station named after
them. The station was called Gillespie Road and was renamed in 1932 after
the team moved from Woolwich to North London.
5Big Ben is not actually the name of the clock, it is the name of the bell which is
inside the clock.
In 1945, a flock of birds landed on the minute hand of Big
Ben and put the time back by 5 minutes.
6
More than half of the London Underground network in fact runs
above ground.
7
The Houses of Parliament are officially known as the Palace of Westminster and it is the largest palace in
the country.
It is illegal to die in the Palace of Westminster.
8The Palace of
Westminster has eight bars (where prices are
kept cheap, thanks to the taxpayer), six restaurants,
1,000 rooms, 100 staircases, 11 courtyards,
a hair salon, and rifle-shooting range.
9The London Eye is not a
Ferris wheel. It’s the world’s tallest cantilevered observation wheel.
The 32 capsules on the London Eye are
representative of the 32 London boroughs, and
each one weighs as much as 1,052,631 pound coins.
10The original medieval London Bridge was in use for more than 600
years; it featured heads displayed on spikes for more than half of that time, including that of
Guy Fawkes and William Wallace.