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Quiz on London: History, Geography, and Culture

This quiz tests your knowledge about London's geography, historical events, and cultural references, including significant institutions and notable figures in media.

#London #Geography #History #Culture #Education #Quiz

1 [71] Forty percent of Greater London is covered by the ________, within which 'LONDON' forms part of postal addresses.

2 [196] In addition, the ________ has been described as the world‘s leading social science institution for teaching and research, and has the most international student body of any university in the world today.

3 In the second half of the ________ and the first half of the 20th, London was noted for its dense fogs and smogs.

4 [57] London's overcrowded conditions lead to ________ epidemics,[58] claiming 14,000 lives in 1848, and 6,000 in 1866.

5 [66] Her Majesty's Coastguard and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution operate on the ________.

6 Who played Ah Kwang the telemovie London?

7 What role did Kelli Garner play in the telemovie London?

8 Which of the following subdivisions is London in?

9 What is the total population of London?

10 What role did Margaret Yarde play in the telemovie London?

💡 Interesting Facts

  • owners of The Punch Bowl, a London pub, have included entertainer Madonna, film director Guy Ritchie and convicted criminal and Kray twins associate Freddie Foreman.
  • roars from lions and tigers in the menagerie at Exeter Exchange in central London scared horses in the street outside.
  • since 1947, the city of Oslo has donated the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree to the city of London, in gratitude for its support of Norway in WWII.
  • the 1865 play Society by T W Robertson marked the London debut of actor Sir Squire Bancroft.
  • in late 17th-century London, men put on women's clothing and walked the streets in hopes of catching the eye of Whipping Tom.
  • in 1971, half the houses in Noel Park, London, were still lacking basic facilities such as baths, internal toilets and hot water.
  • in 1914, the Cumberland Market Group of neo-realism painters founded in London's Cumberland Market held only one exhibition, but was never formally dissolved.
  • in 1924, English light heavyweight boxer Jack Bloomfield fought American Tommy Gibbons in the first ever boxing match to be held at London's famed Wembley Stadium.
  • in 1955, the Glass Age Development Committee proposed to demolish the whole of London's Soho district and rebuild it entirely in glass.
  • the 1917 Silvertown explosion may have been the largest explosion to ever occur in London.
  • the BBC recorded live performances of Hancock's Half Hour, The Goon Show and Steptoe and Son at the Playhouse Theatre (pictured) in London.
  • the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was held in a church in London in 1907.
  • the BMW R1150GS motorcycle was used by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on their 2004 Long Way Round ride from London to New York.
  • the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway, one of London's early underground "tube" railway lines, was built with finance raised by American Charles Yerkes.
  • the Church of Daniel's Band, based in Michigan, chose its name from the title of a sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon in London.
  • the fire at Lakanal House, Camberwell, London was described as "one of the most significant fires in some time in terms of lives lost" by the Assistant Commissioner of the local Fire Brigade.
  • the 1928 Thames flood was the last time central London was flooded.
  • the British Parliament first guaranteed diplomatic immunity to foreign ambassadors in 1709, after Count Andrey Matveyev, a Russian resident in London, had been subjected by British bailiffs to verbal and physical abuse.
  • the English herald Ralph Brooke tricked Sir William Segar into granting a coat of arms to a London hangman.
  • the London Warehouse Theatre was threatened with closure after an Arts Council grant was withdrawn in 1984, but that closure was averted when Croydon Council and the GLC agreed to replace the grant.
  • in 1909 at the age of 17, New Zealand pianist Frank Hutchens became the youngest-ever subprofessor appointed to London's Royal Academy of Music.
  • in 1716, Richard Phelps cast the hour bell popularly known as "Great Tom" (illustration pictured) still in use at St Paul's Cathedral, London.
  • Sir George Everest, after whom Mount Everest was named, is buried at St Andrew's Church, Hove, despite being born in Wales, dying in London and having no apparent connection with the church or town.
  • a modern hippodrama, featuring 32 horses, will be shown in London in September 2009.
  • a team of 13 writers from London aged between 17 and 22 created and wrote the entire series of EastEnders: E20 at a summer school.
  • after Robert Bealknap offended the people of London before the coronation of Richard II they placed a model of his head on a water fountain so that it would vomit wine when the king walked past.
  • North Audley Street in Mayfair, London, is named after the English moneylender Hugh Audley.
  • March 1862 purchases of Greek bonds in London were the result of a report that Prince Wilhelm of Baden (pictured) was to be formally recommended as a candidate for the Greek throne.
  • William Frederick Yeames' painting, And When Did You Last See Your Father?, has been reproduced as a waxwork at Madame Tussauds, London.
  • The 1940s House is a British historical reality television program about a modern family that tries to live as a typical middle-class family in London during The Blitz.
  • English dancer John D'Auban appeared in Robert the Devil at the opening of London's Gaiety Theatre in 1861, and was billed as one of the theatre's "principal grotesque dancers and pantomimists".
  • after retiring as a footballer, Mike Trusson worked as marketing manager for a football-themed restaurant in London.
  • artist Adam Neate left 1,000 prints, valued at £1 million, on London streets for anyone to pick up and keep.
  • during the reign of Beorhtwulf of Mercia, London, the chief trading centre of Mercia, was attacked twice, in 842 and again in 851, by Viking armies.
  • famous tenor Antonio Giuglini used to jaywalk through traffic on London's Brompton Road while flying his kite.
  • football player Michael Liddle made his international debut for Republic of Ireland under-19s although he was born in London, England.
  • in 1661, Lisle's Tennis Court in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London became the first public theatre in England to feature moveable scenery on sliding wings.
  • during engineering work in 1979, the collapse of the Penmanshiel Tunnel severed the main railway line between London and Edinburgh for five months.
  • criminal and boxer, James Field, was so feared by the police force of London in the 18th century, that they would pretend not to recognize him rather than arresting him.
  • because actor Alan Dale was unable to go to Hawaii to appear on ABC's Lost as Charles Widmore, the camera crew moved to London to include him on the show anyway.
  • between 1778 and 1801, Manor House, 21 Soho Square, London, (pictured) was a high-class magic brothel called The White House, described by Henry Mayhew as a "notorious place of ill-fame".
  • between her marriage to Marcus Garvey and her relationship with President of Liberia William Tubman, Pan-Africanist activist Amy Ashwood Garvey ran a club on London's Carnaby Street.
  • the Cockpit Theatre was the first theatre in London's Drury Lane.
  • the Dollis Valley Greenwalk is one of ten parks and open spaces in the London Borough of Barnet to win a £400,000 grant to improve its quality and safety.
  • the mother of PIRA prisoner Jackie McMullan chained herself to railings outside 10 Downing Street in London.
  • the only remaining dock on the south side of London's River Thames is Greenland Dock, the city's oldest riverside dock.
  • the prototype Tracked Hovercraft high-speed train (remains pictured) was expected to reach 300 mph on its test track north of London, but had only broken 100 mph on a short portion before the program was cancelled in 1973.
  • the three-month Great Tea Race of 1866 to bring tea to London from China almost ended in a tie.
  • the gates to Norwood Jewish Orphanage in London were destroyed to allow fire engines easier access to the grounds.
  • the gardens of St George's Square, Pimlico, London, contain a statue of William Huskisson MP, the first person ever to be run over and killed by a railway engine.
  • the final results of the 1940 elections to the People's Parliaments in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were published in London before the voting booths closed.
  • the first and only President of London's Oriental Club was the Duke of Wellington (pictured).
  • the first major international chess tournament took place in London in 1851.
  • the water managed by the Southwark and Vauxhall Waterworks Company of London was once described by a microbiologist as "the most disgusting I have ever examined".
  • to turn an old London fruit market into the New Gallery (pictured) in only three months, Edward Robert Robson's builders encased existing cast-iron columns in marble and topped them with gilded Greek capitals.
  • when refused leave to go to London with the order that he could only travel as far on land as he could get in his barge, Captain Henry Paulet put the barge on a cart and went anyway.
  • when the English actress Lucia Elizabeth Vestris (pictured) took over the Olympic Theatre in 1830, she became the first ever female actor-manager in the history of London theatre.
  • when the Sudanese Boeing 737 Air West Flight 612 was hijacked, the hijacker originally wanted to fly to Rome or London but was forced to settle for Chad due to a lack of fuel.
  • young celebrity chef Sam Stern joined fellow chefs including Jamie Oliver and Anthony Worrall Thompson at the "BBC Good Food Show" in London when he was just 15.
  • when Birmingham-based early-music choir Ex Cathedra founded its Baroque orchestra in its 1983–1984 season, this was the first period instrument orchestra to be established in an English city outside London.
  • visiting Cistercian monks could extend the hospitality of Stratford Langthorne Abbey, near London, by supplying wine and beer for themselves and oats and hay for their horses.
  • trains to London ran eastwards from Devonport Kings Road railway station when it opened in 1876, but from 1890 they ran westwards.
  • two trunk roads from London to the Sussex coast, the A22 and the A23, use parts of the London to Brighton Way.
  • under interrogation, Ahmad al-Naggar stated that Egyptian Islamic Jihad had raised funds by "renovating old houses in London".
  • the famed message "England expects that every man will do his duty" is misquoted on Nelson's Column in London.
  • the expensive and ornate Royal Aquarium, which opened in London in 1876 to present art exhibits and classical music, soon turned to circus acts and music hall instead.
  • the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants aimed to prevent girls in London from becoming prostitutes, criminals and alcoholics by training them as domestic servants.
  • the 1932 National Hunger March, the largest hunger march in the 1920s and 1930s, led to days of widespread violence in central London.
  • the Neo-Renaissance architectural style encompasses such dissimilar structures as the Opera Garnier and Hôtel de Ville in Paris, the National Theatre in Prague, the Reichstag in Berlin, Mentmore Towers near London, Vladimir Palace in Saint Petersburg, and the Public Library in Boston.
  • the Norfolk Biffin apple appears in the works of Charles Dickens and was sent from Norfolk to London for Sir Robert Walpole.
  • the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) was founded in London in 1946 as a national British academic institution to promote and advance legal research, and is now part of the School of Advanced Study of the University of London.
  • the Holophusikon was a museum of natural curiosities and ethnographic items collected by Ashton Lever and exhibited in London from 1775.
  • the Folly Theatre, which specialised in burlesque and opéra bouffe, was originally the residence for Catholic priests of the Oratory of St Philip Neri in London.
  • the Gaiety Girls in shows produced by George Edwardes at the Gaiety Theatre were so popular that the restaurant where they dined became the centre of nightlife in London during the Victorian era.
  • the history of rapid transit began when the London Underground started operations in 1863.
  • the Olympic Javelin is a high-speed rail service announced as part of the public transport regeneration of London in readiness for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
  • the Plaza film theatre in Bangalore, India was modelled after the Piccadilly Circus in London.
  • the annual Global Peace and Unity conference held at the ExCeL Exhibition Centre in London is the largest Muslim event in Europe.
  • the arts company Artichoke produced The Sultan's Elephant (pictured), the biggest piece of free theatre ever staged in London.
  • the audience of the Dorset Garden Theatre in Restoration London found it fashionable and convenient to arrive by boat, thereby avoiding the crime-ridden area of Alsatia.
  • the English engraver John Boydell (pictured) founded the fashionable Shakespeare Gallery in London in 1786, but had to sell it in a lottery in 1804 after he was bankrupted by the Napoleonic Wars.
  • the Ritz Hotel in London was the first hotel to offer a private bathroom for every guest room.
  • the Swaminarayan Temple in the London suburb of Willesden is in a converted church.
  • the Society for the Reformation of Manners, founded in England in 1691, included a network of "moral guardians" in London to gather information about moral infractions.
  • the Teach First organisation which helps top graduate students teach in some of the most deprived areas in London and was inspired by Teach for America, is now expanding to Manchester and Israel.
  • Sir William Edge, a Liberal MP, once raced against a flock of homing pigeons from London to Leicestershire by car and train, but lost the race by two minutes because the train was delayed.
  • William Ansah Sessarakoo, the "Prince of Annamaboe", became a celebrity in mid-18th century London after he was released from slavery, and was compared to Aphra Behn's fictional Oroonoko.
  • Norwegian chemist Alexis Pappas was born in London to Greek parents who fled from Belgium to England during World War I.
  • Richard Prince's controversial "rephotograph" of Garry Gross's nude image of Brooke Shields at age 10 was recently banned from the Tate Gallery in London.
  • Richard Reid, who in 2001 attempted to detonate a bomb hidden in his shoes aboard an aeroplane, used to attend the Brixton Mosque in London, England.
  • Russian billionaire, politician and philanthropist Alexander Lebedev started his career as a KGB agent working in London.
  • Dutch mannerist painter Cornelis Ketel began to paint with his toes towards the end of a successful career as a portraitist, (example, right) in Elizabethan London and Amsterdam.
  • merchant, sugar grower and politician George Raff helped establish the Brisbane government and was the main substantiater of wool trade between Brisbane and London.
  • London's historic United University Club (1821-1972) is now occupied by the London Centre of the University of Notre Dame.
  • London's old Artillery Church was used by five different kinds of Protestants before becoming the Sandys Row Synagogue.
  • London-born actress Sarah Badel made her acting debut in India.
  • Scottish bookseller Alexander Donaldson sold cheap copies of books after their copyright had expired, in disregard to London booksellers' opinions on literary property.
  • temperance leader William E. "Pussyfoot" Johnson lost his right eye after he was captured by a mob of medical students and paraded through the streets of London.
  • Buster, the dog of British Labour politician Roy Hattersley, earned his owner a criminal record after killing a goose in St. James's Park, London.
  • Carpenter's Coffee House in Covent Garden, London, became known as "The Finish" as it was the place revellers went when all the other coffee houses and taverns closed.
  • Castle Green in London was named after a castellated house built from around 1800 that survived until 1938.
  • Charles Angibaud was the royal apothecary to Louis XIV of France, but left France in 1681 to avoid persecution as a Protestant Huguenot and moved to London, where he was later Master of the Society of Apothecaries.
  • Birdcage Walk in the City of Westminster, London, is named after the Royal Menagerie and Aviary which was located beside it in the reign of Kings James I and expanded by Charles II.
  • Augustus Dickens, the brother of English novelist Charles Dickens, abandoned his blind wife in London and ran away to America with another woman.
  • British architect Jan Kaplický escaped from Prague to London in the wake of the Prague Spring, carrying only US$100 and a few pairs of socks.
  • Albert Bridge (pictured) in London is seriously structurally unsound in part because of rotting caused by dog's urine.
  • Alfred Merle Norman, whose collection of 11,086 species was acquired by the Natural History Museum in London, was awarded the Linnean Medal in 1906.
  • London's St James's Club (1857–1978) was claimed to be the only gentlemen's club with a room devoted solely to backgammon.
  • London's Novelty Theatre, built in 1882, changed its name at least five times in its first dozen years of operation.
  • Alfred the Great's taking of London in 886 was followed by his treaty with Guthrum, the Viking ruler of East Anglia.
  • Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington helped popularize the Portuguese wine Bucelas in London after he discovered it while fighting in the Peninsular War.
  • Byron recorded seeing the "tigers sup" at the Exeter Exchange menagerie in central London owned by Edward Cross.
  • charcoal merchant Thomas Britton (pictured) ran a series of concerts in his loft at which the most famous musicians in London performed.
  • Albert Bridge in London (pictured) is the only significant surviving example of a bridge built using the 1858 Ordish–Lefeuvre Principle design.
  • Admiral Sir Francis Geary was a noted bellringer at St Bride's Church, London.
  • 16 tunnels, many for tube lines, run beneath London's River Thames.
  • 19th century London song-writer Helen, Lady Dufferin was admired by Disraeli, compared with Helen of Troy in a poem by Browning, and had a village named after her.
  • 17th century London printer Nicholas Okes printed the first quartos of Shakespeare's King Lear and Othello.
  • Conor McPherson's The Weir was performed on Broadway in 1998, less than a year after its original opening at The Royal Court Theatre in London.
  • Edward Alleyn had to form a partnership with twelve others to meet the £1,000 cost to rebuild the Fortune Playhouse in London after it burned down in 1621.
  • London printer William Stansby published the landmark first folio collection of the works of Ben Jonson in 1616.
  • London will soon have a Walk of Fame for dogs.
  • London's Army and Navy Club stands on a site once partly occupied by the house of the actress Moll Davis, a mistress of King Charles II.
  • London's Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway was built at the start of the 20th century, from parts of three other railways' routes.
  • horn player Neill Sanders commuted from Kalamazoo, Michigan, to London, where he played in the Melos Ensemble.
  • Labour Member of Parliament Ellen Wilkinson organised the 1936 Jarrow March of 200 unemployed men and women from Tyneside to London to demand jobs.
  • Italian-Swiss entrepreneur Carlo Gatti pioneered the sale of ice cream to the general public in London from 1849, and later ran several music halls.
  • Jabba The Hutt puppeteer Toby Philpott (pictured) began his career as a homeless juggler in the streets of London.
  • Jonathan Swift's (pictured) 1709 poem "A Description of the Morning", which discusses contemporary life in London, provided inspiration for William Hogarth's series of paintings Four Times of the Day.
  • Charles Sargeant Jagger sculpted three World War I memorials, all in London.
  • Chelsea Bridge was little used at night when it first opened, because of its owners' policy of only turning the lighting on if Queen Victoria was spending the night in London.
  • Polly Morgan is a London based British artist who uses taxidermy to create works of art.
  • Prince Ludwig of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg mysteriously disappeared from London society to the Philippines, where he was killed during a battle of the Philippine–American War.
  • Radio Londres, a Free French radio broadcast from London to Nazi occupied France, read Paul Verlaine's poem Chanson d'automne as a code to inform the resistance that Operation Overlord was about to take place.
  • Richard Ferguson joined a gang of highwaymen after recognising the man robbing his stagecoach near London as a former acquaintance.
  • Paul's walk, the central aisle of Old St Paul's Cathedral, was a grapevine for London gossip and news during the 16th and 17th centuries.
  • Nicolas-Charles Bochsa, who helped found the Royal Academy of Music in 1822, was only in London because he had fled France five years earlier to avoid prosecution for multiple counts of forgery and fraud.
  • Louise Pitre, a Tony Award-nominated musical theatre actress, was turned down after auditioning for the role of Josephine in the London musical Napoleon.
  • Nellie Farren was best known for her roles as the "principal boy" in burlesques at the Gaiety Theatre in London.
  • Nicci French is the pseudonym for a couple of London journalists, Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, who write psychological thrillers together.
  • Richard de Southchurch, Sheriff of Essex, planned to attack London with burning cocks.
  • Springfield Park was created in 1905 from the grounds of three London houses, one of which is now a cafe.
  • Walter Hancock designed the first steam-powered bus to travel from London to Brighton.
  • Wandsworth Bridge has been described as "probably the least noteworthy bridge in London".
  • West Ham Stadium in London holds the record for the lowest ever attendance of a football match in The Football League, despite its capacity of 120,000.
  • Westcott railway station was a part of the London Underground, despite being more than 40 miles from central London.
  • Walter Emden designed London theatres and music halls in the late 19th century, including the Palace Theatre, the Duke of York's, the Garrick and the Royal Court.
  • The Metros, a five-piece punk pop band from Peckham, London, were formerly known as The Wanking Skankers.
  • St James's Hall, London's principal concert hall and home of the Philharmonic Society in the 19th century, had annual seasons of blackface minstrelsy.
  • Tachikawa Airfield (aerial photo pictured) was the military base in Tokyo from which the 1937 original Kamikaze plane to London took off.
  • Television House on Kingsway in London served as the headquarters of Associated-Rediffusion, Independent Television News, the TV Times magazine, Associated TeleVision and Thames Television between 1955 and the early 1970s.
  • London Pride is a garden flower symbolic of ordinary Londoners' resilience under attack.
  • Leyton F.C. had to win a High Court action in order to call itself the oldest football club in London.
  • Frederick Marrable resigned his post as Chief Architect to the Metropolitan Board of Works in London when they offered him a derisory salary raise.
  • Grub Street (pictured), in London's Moorfields district, was home to hack writers, and later became a pejorative term for impoverished authors.
  • Horseferry Road takes its name from a horse-ferry from The Embankment to Lambeth Stairs, once one of the most important Thames crossings in London, and which was owned by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
  • Hungerford Market, a food market in London for nearly 200 years, was demolished in the 1860s to make way for Charing Cross railway station.
  • Edward Laurillard produced musical comedies in London and New York in the early 20th century, in partnership with George Grossmith, Jr..
  • Edward Atienza made his London theatrical debut in 1954, as the Mole in Toad of Toad Hall.
  • Cinimod Studio in London, United Kingdom, designed a virtual sky ceiling for a Snog frozen yogurt outlet with clouds whose speeds and colors depend upon the time of day.
  • Democrats Abroad began with two small committees in London and Paris in 1965, and has grown to be a large international organization.
  • E. S. Kennedy – a founding member of London's Alpine Club – proposed a modification to the mountaineering ice axe based on the American backwoodsman's axe.
  • James Godkin was simultaneously the chief editor of the Daily Express newspaper and the Dublin correspondent of The Times of London.
  • Johannes Kvittingen, an exiled Norwegian bacteriologist in London in 1940, was asked to be head recruiter of Norwegian agents for the Special Operations Executive.
  • Joseph Haines was a well-known London song-and-dance man, comedian, and eccentric in the 17th century.
  • Sir Kirby Laing served as Deputy Lieutenant of both London and Hertfordshire.
  • Kuh Ledesma was the first Philippine singer to receive the Salem Music Awards in London in March 1989.
  • Joseph Farington (pictured) kept a diary almost daily from 13 July 1793 until 30 December 1821 that has provided historians with insight into the London art world as well as first-hand accounts of important political events of the day.
  • John Smith, a noted 18th century London housebreaker, managed to avoid execution three times, and was eventually transported to Virginia.
  • John Palmer instigated a major reform of the British postal system in 1784, when his experimental mail coach run from Bristol to London took only 16 hours instead of 38 hours.
  • John Pitre's 1965 visionary art painting, A New Dawn, which was valued at $1.7 million in 1997, was offered in trade for a £1 million house in London in 2004.
  • John Roberts was an Australian businessman who founded the construction company Multiplex, which is currently building the new Wembley Stadium in London.
  • "Carolina in My Mind", James Taylor's nostalgic 1968 song about growing up in North Carolina, was written in London and on the Mediterranean islands of Formentera and Ibiza.
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