London Trivia: Diary’s last entry

On 31 May 1669 bad eyesight forced Samuel Pepys to give up his diary. He was just 36 years old. It read ‘And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, I must forbear. . . all the discomforts that my being blind’ On 31 May 1915 a German bomb hit Stoke Newington, the dubious distinction of the first building attacked by a foreign power in 1,000 years In May 1726 a stand erected at Tyburn collapsed as reviled Catherine Hayes was burnt at the stake six spectators predeceased her as a result On 31 May 1859 the Great Clock on Big Ben started telling the time. The Great Bell and the quarter bells chimed later that year Many Londoners died in the Black Death of 1348, it raged in London until spring 1350, and is generally assumed to have killed between one third and one…