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Quirky London science facts
Matt Brown
Thursday, 24 January 2008 08:59 UTC
Anyone got an anecdote about London science? For example, Bar Italia in Soho – a famous late-night cafe and the subject of a song by Pulp – was also the place where TV was first demonstrated by John Logie Baird in 1926.
Fact.
Please share any other odd nuggets of London trivia here.
Updated 24 January 2008 08:59 UTC
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Replies
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The site of Royal Hospital Chelsea, home to the pensioners, had originally been given to the Royal Society just after it was founded, but they sold it back – the apocryphal tale is that they thought it too far outside of London for a HQ - the RS never did buy a permanent base.
John Snow’s memorial pump in Soho isn’t where the infamous pump was – for the location of that, look for the pink granite kerbstone outside the John Snow pub. His gravestone in Brompton Cemetary has been restored three times – most recently, as it was hit by a bomb in WWII. There’s a few science and engineering types in Brompton (I used to live near there and happily went a wandering), including the engineer of the Forth Bridge.
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Cheers Scott – I never knew that about the pump. I hope the pub doesn’t have its own in-house microbrewery, drawing on local ground water. Two G&Ts and a half of cholera, please.
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On a tour of the Medical school at St George’s hospital in Tooting, South London, I was told that the cow hide hanging in the library was from the very cow that their most famous alumnus Edward Jenner used to test the smallpox vaccine.
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Helen – that’s some top-draw facting.
I had no idea about this bovine treasure of St George’s.
Come on the rest of you – let’s have your bestest (London) science trivia.
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I’m not sure if this is a fact or not, but I liked this tale of Victorian gentlemen getting the bends from champagne in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. Worthy of further research, methinks!
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Haha, great find, Scott. I love the Greenwich Phantom – I’d not seen this post before though. Maybe we should offer to help her out in August.
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