On this date in 1807 Pall Mall became the first London street to be lit by gaslight. 10 facts about Pall Mall:
It was named after a game. The game of pall mall was popular in the 17th century and was similar to croquet. It is said to have originated in Italy where Pallamaglio loosely translates as ‘ball mallet’, and introduced to England by James I. Samuel Pepys's diary entry for 2 April 1661 says: "I went into St. James's Park, where I saw the Duke of York playing at Pelemele, the first time that I ever saw the sport". In 1630, St James's Field, London's first pall-mall court, was laid out to the north of the Haymarket, in the area where Pall Mall is today.
It’s also found within a game. Pall Mall is part of a group of three squares on the British Monopoly board game, the other two being Whitehall and Northumberland Avenue. All three streets converge at Trafalgar Square. Pall Mall is in the lowest-priced third of properties on the Monopoly board, but in real life even a small flat there would set you back over £1 million.
The street is around 0.4 miles (0.64 km) long.
Historical research suggests there has been a road in this location since Saxon times. The earliest written references are from the 12th century in connection with a leper colony at St James's Hospital.
One of the things Pall Mall is known for is high class shopping. Two of the historical shops include that of the Vulliamy family, who made Clocks at No. 68 between 1765 and 1854; and Robert Dodsley’s bookshop at No. 52, where he suggested the idea of a dictionary to Samuel Johnson.
The world’s oldest shopping arcade is here, called the Royal Opera Arcade, because it was built on the west side of the Royal Opera House, now Her Majesty’s Theatre. It survived a fire which destroyed the theatre in 1867. Royal Opera Arcade was designed by John Nash and his assistant George Repton.
Carlton House Terrace is home to the only Nazi-era memorial in London. Before the second world war, the German Embassy was based here. Giro, the ambassador's German shepherd, tragically died in 1934, electrocuted trying to chew through the Embassy’s wire fence. Giro’s grave, with its headstone, is still there.
In 1814 the Royal Academy, the National Gallery and Christie's auction house were all based on this street.
Most of the property on the south side belongs to the crown, the exception being number 79, which was given to the trustees of Nell Gwyn, mistress to Charles II. Aside from Nell Gwyn, some famous residents of Pall Mall include Richard Cosway, Thomas Gainsborough and Giacomo Casanova. King George V was born here in 1865.
The Pall Mall Gazette was an evening Newspaper founded in London in 1865 by George Murray Smith. It was absorbed into The Evening Standard in 1923. Prior to that it made several appearances in fiction. Sherlock Holmes places an advertisement in The Pall Mall Gazette, in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, and a Pall Mall Gazette article describing the escape of a wolf from the Zoological Gardens appears in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Character birthday
Captain Australia, aka Bruce Foster, He grew up in Melbourne and excelled at all types of sport. Went to university in Sydney although mostly for the opportunities to play sports and compete. When he realised his strength was beyond normal human limits, he began styling himself as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek Australian superhero.
No comments:
Post a Comment