Waterloo
Bridge in London opened on this date in 1817. 10 things you may not know about Waterloo Bridge:
- It stands between Blackfriars Bridge and Hungerford Bridge, and thanks to its position on a bend of the River Thames, views from this bridge are said to be the best views of London you can get from the ground.
- Before it was opened, it was called Strand Bridge.
- The day it opened, 18 June 1817, was the second anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, and was given the name Waterloo Bridge in honour of that.
- The bridge that stands today is the second Waterloo Bridge. The original was badly damaged by flowing water and needed to be replaced with a more robust design. The new Waterloo Bridge was fully opened in 1945.
- It has been a Grade II listed structure since 1981.
- It is sometimes referred to as "the ladies bridge," because the work force was largely female.
- In the 1840s, Waterloo Bridge was a popular place to commit suicide. Thomas Hood's poem, The Bridge of Sighs is about a prostitute who killed herself there. In 1841, there was also an accidental death when an American showman called Samuel Gilbert Scott was performing a stunt which involved hanging from a scaffold on the bridge, and it went horribly wrong.
- It was the only bridge on the Thames to be damaged by German bombers in World War II.
- The beams of the new bridge are made from Portland Stone from the South West of England, and the stone cleans itself whenever it rains.
- When the old bridge was demolished, some of the original stone was shipped off to Commonwealth countries. Two of the stones are now part of a bridge in Canberra, Australia, while still more were used to build a monument to Paddy the Wanderer, a friendly dog which lived around the wharves of Wellington, New Zealand.
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