London Facts

On Christmas Eve in London, the sun sets at around 3:53pm and doesn't rise again until approximately 8:06am on Christmas Day, giving Britons over 16 hours of darkness for their festive celebrations.

The 426 escalators in the London Underground cover a distance every week equivalent to traveling around the world more than twice.

In the late 1600s, London was plagued by an attacker who would spank his victims with a rod and shout "Spanko!" before running away.

In the Great Fire of London in 1666, 80% of the City of London burned down over four days, but only 6 deaths were officially recorded.

The Christmas tree displayed in Trafalgar square in London is an annual gift to the UK from Norway since 1947. The Norwegian spruce given is a token of appreciation of British friendship during World War II from the Norwegian people.

London's Pall Mall became the first street lit by gaslight in 1807!

Harrods have three private wells to supply their water!

London once had a public toilet made entirely of one-way mirrored glass, allowing users to see pedestrians walking by while remaining invisible inside.

The Prince Charle Cinema in London has volunteer "ninjas" that hush obnoxious moviegoers.

"Big Ben" in London isn't a tower, the bell inside the tower is called "Big Ben", the tower itself is called "The Elizabeth Tower".

London's King's Cross railway station features a Platform 9¾ installation complete with a luggage trolley disappearing into the wall, created as a tribute to Harry Potter.

There are more people living in London (8.3m) than the whole of Denmark (5.6m).

The Shell Oil Company began as a novelty shop in London that sold sea shells.

A man on a unicycle was hit by a double-decker bus in London and dragged under the front wheel. Within seconds, around 100 bystanders surrounded the 12-tonne bus and physically lifted it off the ground to free him. The whole thing was caught on video. He spent a month in hospital but survived. The man was on a unicycle. A hundred strangers lifted a bus.

In 1814, a giant vat of beer ruptured at a London brewery, unleashing 135,000 gallons of porter through the streets. It demolished two homes, collapsed a pub wall, and killed eight people. The brewery went to court. The jury ruled it an Act of God. Nobody paid a penny.

A 22-year-old Londoner did the math and realised flying to Morocco for a haircut was cheaper than his local barber - £39 total (flight, hostel, taxi and trim) vs £41 at home. He saved £2 and got a free holiday.

While filming Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides at Greenwich's Old Naval College in 2010, Johnny Depp received a letter from a 9-year-old girl at a nearby school asking Captain Jack Sparrow for help with a "mutiny" against her teachers. With just ten minutes' notice, Depp arrived at the school in full pirate costume — but advised against the idea of mutiny.

Two young Australians bought a lion cub from Harrods for 250 guineas in 1969 and raised him in a Chelsea furniture shop. When he grew too big for city life, they released him into the wild in Kenya. A year later, they flew back to find him. They were warned he might not remember. Christian recognized them and sprinted to embrace them.

A London skyscraper accidentally became a giant curved mirror. Its glass facade focused sunlight into a beam so intense it melted a parked Jaguar, scorched a shop, and let a reporter fry an egg on the pavement. The architect had built the same flaw in Las Vegas years earlier.

London Bridge, the real one from the Thames, now stands in the Arizona desert. In 1968, developer Robert McCulloch bought it for .46 million. Workers numbered every exterior granite block, shipped them 10,000 miles through the Panama Canal, and rebuilt the bridge over a canal in Lake Havasu City. It reopened in 1971 and still draws tourists today.