This is why you’d have to be tired of life not to love the place. With special thanks to Simon Leyland’s superb A Curious Guide To London .
1. The first person to receive a parking ticket in London was parked on Great Cumberland Place... and was a doctor attending a heart attack victim.
2. In 1938 a pedestrian was killed by a stone phallus that fell from a statue on the Strand.
3. Harrods sold cocaine until 1916.
4. This is Britain's smallest police station, designed in 1926 to monitor demonstrations. You can find it in the south-east corner of Trafalgar Square.
5. It was believed that as long as there are ravens at the Tower of London, Britain will be safe from invasion. Birds are still looked after by the raven master today.
6. The first man to wear a top hat in public supposedly caused so much hysteria and commotion in St James' that he was arrested for disturbing the peace.
7. The last wolf in the City of London is commemorated at the spot it was killed, where a wolf's head forms the waterspout of the Aldgate pub.
8. There's a Nazi memorial in Carlton House Terrace. Sort of. Below is Giro's grave – he was a dog owned by Dr Leopold von Hoesch, who was the German Ambassador in London from 1932 to 1936. He died in 1934 from accidental electrocution (contact with an exposed wire) and the small tombstone has the German epitaph "Giro: Ein treuer Begleiter" which means "Giro: A true companion".
