London

100-81 | 80-61 | 60-41 | 40-21 | 20-1

100 The Great Exhibition, 1851
The Great Exhibition opened on May 1 and brought six million people to Hyde Park. Exhibits included engines, diamonds, textiles and a knife with 300 blades. Its profits paid for the V&A, Science Museum, Natural History Museum, Albert Hall and Imperial College.

99 Oscar Wilde’s landmark indecency trial, 1895
The Marquess of Queensberry, appalled at Wilde’s relationship with his son, left a card at Wilde’s Albemarle Club in Mayfair calling the playwright a ‘sodomite’. Wilde was arrested on April 5 and sentenced to two years’ hard labour on May 25. Feature continues

98 The Tower turns white, 1241
The Tower of London’s White Tower went up in 1078 and became one of the first London icons in 1241 (another, the abbey at Westminster, was established in 1065) when it was whitewashed.

97 ‘Pygmalion’ sparks a sweary scandal, 1914
Actress Mrs Patrick Campbell was said to have risked her career by saying ‘Not bloody likely!’ at Her Majesty’s on April 11. For years afterwards, a swear word was known as a ‘pygmalion’.

96: The early days of the London Underground (© Mary Evans Picture Library)

96 The tube takes transport underground, 1863
The world’s first underground train rolled out from Paddington to Farringdon, on January 10 1863. It was late. Probably.

95 The Goons get drunk, 1949
Comedy history was made in the Grafton Arms, Victoria, when Spike Milligan wandered in and made friends with the owner, Jimmy Grafton, who was also a part-time BBC comedy writer. In a series of well-oiled meetings on the premises, Grafton and Milligan, with Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine, evolved the comedy that would influence everyone from Monty Python to Chris Morris.

94 The Kinks invent punk rock, 1964
The Kinks built their third single, ‘You Really Got Me’ (recorded at IBC studio, Portland Place), around parallel fifths – inventing rock guitarists’ staple ‘power chord’ in the process – while Dave played the solo through an amplifier distorted by a razorblade and pin. Smart-alecs say this was the first heavy metal song, which is crazy: clearly this was the birth of punk. A decade later, The Sex Pistols just had to add pantomime, politics and a whiff of controversy to shock the world.

93-89 Sporting milestones
Football Association formed on October 26 1863 at Freemasons Tavern, Great Queen St.
Queensberry rules were drafted for fights at Lillie Bridge, West Brompton, in 1867.
Kerry Packer’s World Series cricket took shape in May 1977 after a meeting at Lord’s on June 23 led to war with the International Cricket Conference and a breakaway league.
Blackheath withdrew from the FA on Dec 8 1863, cementing rugby as a separate sport.
Fanny Blankers-Koen won four gold medals at 1948 Olympics in August. She was later named ‘Female Athlete of the Century’.

88 Ruskin vs Whistler: art in the dock, 1878
When The Grosvenor Galleries displayed Whistler’s ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket’, Ruskin said ‘a coxcomb… [has flung] a pot of paint in the public’s face’. Whistler sued Ruskin for libel at the Old Bailey. Whistler won, and was awarded a farthing in damages.

87 Murdoch takes The Sun tabloid, 1969
The Sun was a fading broadsheet when Rupert Murdoch snapped it up and relaunched it as a tabloid. ‘I am constantly amazed at the ease with which I entered British newspapers,’ he later said.

86 Hitchcock’s dad sends him to jail, 1907
To terrify him into a crime-free life, William Hitchcock arranged for his eight-year-old son to spend five minutes in a Leytonstone police cell. Young Alfred went on to develop a rewarding interest in crime, punishment and suspense.

85 The London mob rises against Edward II, 1326
In September 1326, London sided with Queen Isabella against Edward II, as the mob beheaded the king’s treasurer and besieged the Tower. Edward was later killed, supposedly by an ungracious skewering with a hot poker.

84 Fenian bomb explodes in the capital, 1867
A bombing campaign spanning a century began at 3.45pm on December 13 1867, when Irish nationalists left 548lb of explosives outside Clerkenwell House of Detention, killing six.

83 ‘Sensation’ at the Royal Academy, 1997
The portrait of Myra Hindley, the pickled shark, the tent appliquéd with sexual exploits and the elephant dung-adorned black virgin… Charles Saatchi’s YBAs (including Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Chris Ofili) were met with flying pots of ink and a mixture of opprobium and kudos. Ripples were felt worldwide after Mayor Giuliani tried to shut it down in New York and Sydney banned it altogether.

82 Leo Szilard sparks nuclear chain reaction, 1933
Physicist Leo Szilard fled Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s and was given temporary lodging at the Strand Palace Hotel. He was an eccentric genius and legendarily lazy. Among Szilard’s less endearing habits was his refusal to flush toilets on the grounds this was ‘maid’s work’. Every morning he would lie in his bath for hours, thinking about atomic energy and how to control it. He was looking for ways to break open an atom’s nucleus but could see no practical method of doing so. Then, on Tuesday, September 12 1933, in the early afternoon, Szilard took a walk to clear his mind and reached Southampton Row, where it meets Russell Square. As the traffic lights changed, Szilard stepped off the kerb, an event described in cosmic terms by Richard Rhodes in ‘The Making of the Atomic Bomb’: ‘As Szilard crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future… [and] the shape of things to come.’

What Szilard realised was that if you struck an atomic nucleus of the right element with a neutron, you would crack it open; it would release two or more neutrons as well as excess energy. The neutrons would then strike other nuclei, releasing more energy and neutrons – which would strike even more nuclei. Szilard had hit upon the idea of a chain reaction, the process that drives nuclear reactors and lies at the heart of atomic weapons. Not bad for a morning stroll in Bloomsbury. He persuaded his friend Albert Einstein to write to President Roosevelt to warn him the Germans might build an atom bomb based on such a chain reaction and to press for an Allied bomb-building programme. Later, he worked with Enrico Fermi in Chicago and helped build the world’s first nuclear reactor. Without Szilard, the atomic bomb would not have been developed during World War II and the history of the twentieth century would have been profoundly different. Robin McKie

81 Jazz hits the Hippodrome, 1919
The Original Dixieland Jazz Band caused a storm when they played in London on April 7 – partly because the show was Europe’s first taste of the Dixieland ‘hot jazz’ sensation and partly because the Hippodrome was mobbed by US servicemen.

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