My first Magazine Revista_Creativ_2016_Fonturi | Page 22

AMAZING FACTS IN LONDON Eleva Adina Rotaru, clasa a XI -a f Prof. coordonator Virgil Atanasiu It is illegal to die in the Palace of Westminster. Many playwrights and poets are buried at Westminster Abbey. The tomb of Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser is there and contains unpublished works by his admirers who threw poems into his grave as a tribute. Big Ben is the bell, not the clock tower. The Beatles played their last gig on the roof of Apple Corps at 3 Saville Row. It’s now an Abercrombie & Fitch store. Jimi Hendrix lived at 23 Brook Street, which has been used as offices but is now being converted into a museum. Two doors down at 25 Brook Street is where the composer Handel lived from 1723 to his death in 1759, and that flat has already been turned into a museum. London is full of pubs associated with artists, writers, and poets. The Fitzroy Tavern on Charlotte Street was famous for hosting Dylan Thomas, George Orwell, and satanist Aleister Crowley, who invented a cocktail once served there. Great Ormond Street Hospital, off Russell Square, owns the copyright to Peter Pan and receives royalties from all associated works and performances. Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club on Frith Street was the site of Jimi Hendrix’s last public performance in 1970. Trident Studios is where The Beatles made much of the White Album and David Bowie recorded Ziggy Stardust. The reading room at the British Museum is where Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital . The Houses of Parliament are officially known as the Palace of Westminster and it is the largest palace in the country. Hitler wanted to dismantle Nelson’s column and rebuild it in Berlin. Underneath the Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment there’s a time capsule from 1878 that’s said to contain cigars, a razor, a portrait of Queen Victoria, copies of 10 daily newspapers, and pictures of 12 “English beauties of the day”. Voltaire, Edgar Allen Poe, Ho Chi Minh, Mahatma Gandhi, Vincent Van Gogh, Sigmund Freud, and Hiter’s older half-brother all lived in London for a time. It’s illegal to wear armour in the British Parliament. More than 1,000 bodies are buried underneath Aldgate station, in a plague pit built in 1665. London buses were not always red. Before 1907, different routes had different- coloured buses. It is considered an act of treason to put a postage stamp with the queen’s head upside down on an envelope! 21