The Untold Story of .London

To celebrate the release of .london, Midphase reveals a list of fascinating facts about the English capital…

A whopping 26 million people visit London every single year to set eyes on Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and of course The London Eye .
A total of 15 million of London’s visitors are international, with more than 806,000 hailing from North America.
Today, the new web address ending .london goes on sale to the public. To mark the occasion, we thought we’d treat you to a bit of London trivia…
Did you know?

• London is home to more spoken languages than anywhere else in the world – there are more than 100 in total.
• The Times of London invented the font ‘Times New Roman’ in 1931, after being accused of being “badly printed and typographically antiquated”.
• London is home to Heathrow Airport, which hosts more international passenger traffic than anywhere else in the world.
• In Hyde Park there is an entire pet cemetery devoted to the departed companions of Londoners.
• German spy, Josef Jakobs, was the last person to be executed at the Tower of London in 1941.
• To be a London black-cab driver you must pass the insanely difficult ‘knowledge test’, which is composed of 25,000 streets and 20,000 landmarks and places of interest within a six mile radius of the city.
• There are somewhere around 20 rivers roaring underneath London’s surface.
• In 2012, London hosted its third Olympic Games, being the first city in the world to accomplish such a feat.
• If you wish to drive in downtown London between the hours of 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. you have to pay a “congestion fee” of £10.
• Big Ben is not actually the name of the giant clock; rather it is the giant bell inside the tower. The tower itself is actually called The Elizabeth Tower.
• Big Ben (the bell) chimes in the key of E.
• The original, Medieval London Bridge stood for over 600 years and for more than half of its existence featured heads displayed on its spikes.
• The classic double-decker buses in London were not always red. Before 1907, the buses were different colors based on the routes they traveled.

 If you want a .london, you can snap one up through Midhase’s sister company UK2.net.