March 10th: Piccadilly Circus

Piccadilly circus tube station opened on this date in 1906. Here are 10 things you might not know about Piccadilly Circus.

1. First, about the tube station. It's underneath Piccadilly Circus itself, and is unusual in that it has no buildings at all above ground.
2. It's called Piccadilly Circus, not because there was ever a circus there, but because Circus comes from the Latin word for "ring". The Piccadilly bit is thought by some to have a connection with prostitution, but that's an urban myth. It was named after the thoroughfare Piccadilly, which in turn is named after a house which belonged to a man called Robert Baker, a tailor who sold a particular type of collar called a piccadill.
3. While we're debunking misconceptions about the place, let's talk about the statue of Eros. It isn't Eros at all, but Anteros, the Greek god of returned, mature love. To be fair, Anteros is Eros's brother so perhaps it's the family resemblance which has caused the confusion. The other unusual thing about him is that he is made from aluminium, which was unusual for the time as it was a very expensive metal to produce.
4. The fountain Anteros stands on is the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, erected in 1893 to commemorate the philanthropic works of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury.
5. Around 1858 it was briefly known as Regent's Circus. Piccadilly was once known as Portugal Street.
6. Another thing Piccadilly Circus is famous for is huge, illuminated advertising hoardings. That tradition started in 1908, with the first illuminated advert, which was for Perrier. The first Neon sign was for the British meat extract Bovril. The first digital sign was for Coca Cola, in December 1998. Coca-Cola has had a sign there since 1954.
7. The lights are only turned off occasionally, usually because someone really important has died - Winston Churchill in 1965 and Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 - but they were turned off in June 2007 for one hour as part of the Lights Out London campaign.
8. In 2002, Yoko Ono spent about £150k to show the lyrics from her late husband John Lennon’s song Imagine on a Piccadilly Circus billboard for three months.
9. On the south side stands the Criterion Theatre, a Grade II* listed building. Like the tube station, it is almost entirely underground, apart from the box office. It has 600 seats and reached by a tiled stairway.
10. When any place gets really busy, someone from the UK may well say, "It's like Piccadilly Circus in here". It has even been said that if you hang out at Piccadilly Circus for long enough, you will bump into everyone you know. This could be the thinking behind the code name given to the Allies' D-Day invasion fleet's assembly location in the English Channel during World War II - "Piccadilly Circus".

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