2nd February 1650: the Birth of Nell Gwyn

On this day in 1650, Nell Gwyn was supposedly born in Covent Garden - although the date, year, and city of her birth remain disputed. Described as "pretty, witty Nell" by the diarist Samuel Pepys, she rose from childhood poverty to become one of the first female actresses in England - and ultimately the mistress of King Charles II. She had two sons by the king, one of whom became the Duke of St Albans; the current holder of the title, the 14th Duke of St Albans, is Nell Gywn's direct descendant.

On this day in 1996 the IRA detonated a truck bomb at South Quay in Docklands. Two people were killed, and more than one hundred injured, with £150m worth of damage caused.

On this day in 1971 decimalised currency was introduced in the UK. The millennium-old system of pounds, shillings and pence - known as LSD from the Latin coinage system of librae, solidi, and denarii - had consisted of twelve pence in a shilling, and twenty shillings to a pound, making a pound 240 pence; a good costing 30p, for example, would be referred to as "two and six" (two shillings and sixpence). Attempts had been made to decimalise the currency since the 1840s, but it wasn't until the adoption of the Halsbury Committee report into the matter in 1966 that the government committed to implementing the simpler system of one hundred pence to a pound. The pound kept its pre-decimalisation value, with one 'new pence' - 1p - being the value of 2.4d (old pence), and a shilling being worth 5p. Banks were closed from the evening of Wednesday 10th February until the morning of Monday 15th to allow for the - often manual, computers not having been adopted in all branches - conversion of customer balances into the decimalised currency. After 'D-Day' goods could still be purchased in old money but change would be given in the new currency, and due to the extensive public information campaign beforehand there were few issues with the switchover. One element of pre-decimalisation that still exists is the guinea - twenty-one shillings, or £1.05 - which is used in the purchase of racehorses.

On this day in 1633 Samuel Pepys was born in a house on Salisbury Court, next to St Bride's Church on Fleet Street. Born the son of a tailor, his family nonetheless had important connections, and Pepys would become Chief Secretary of the Admiralty, a Member of Parliament, and President of the Royal Society. Pepys is however most famous for his diary, which he began on 1st January 1660 and continued for ten years. Stretching to a million words long, it covered both mundane events such as Pepys's diet, his extra-marital affairs, and being woken by his cat; to events of huge historic significance including the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the Great Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of London of 1666 - during which Pepys buried his Parmesan Cheese in the back garden for safe-keeping. Fearing he was losing his eyesight, Pepys ceased writing his diary on 31st May 1669, in which entry he writes, "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". The year of Pepys's birth on his plaque is listed as 1632, as at that time New Year's Day wasn't until the 25th March (Lady's Day); it was over a century later in 1752 that Britain switched from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar, and with it adopted the 1st January as New Year's Day.

On this day in 1906 the Kingsway Tram Subway opened. Running on single-decker trams between Southampton Row at the junction with Theobald's Road, down onto the Victoria Embankment underneath Waterloo Bridge, the tunnel contained underground stations at Holborn and Aldwych - making it the only underground tram system in Britain. Originally the route ran between Angel and Embankment; within a few years it was expanded to Highbury Station in the north, with routes across both Blackfriars and Westminster Bridges to the Hop Exchange, Kennington, and Elephant and Castle in the south. In 1931 the tunnel was deepened, allowing for double-decker trams to make the service more commercially viable. After the Second World War however it was decided to replace London's trams with buses, and the last tram service ran on 5th July 1952. The tunnel was initially used for storage, but in 1964 a section was re-opened to cars as the Strand Underpass, with a new entrance at the northern end of Waterloo Bridge and an exit on Kingsway next to the junction with Kemble Street. The old northern entrance on Southampton Row is occasionally used for filming.

On this day in 1864 the first Peabody Trust social housing estate was opened, on Commercial Street in Spitalfields. George Peabody was born in 1795 to a poor family in Massachusetts, but he became a wealthy banker and settled permanently in London in 1837 where he co-founded the company that would become JP Morgan. In 1862 Peabody established the Peabody Donation Fund with an initial gift of £150,000 (around £9m today), which was later increased to £500,000 (£30m). The aim of the fund was to provide decent quality housing for the "artisans and labouring poor of London", and in 1864 the first Peabody Estate opened on Commercial Street in Spitalfields with fifty-seven flats. There were strict rules for those who could live in the estates: rents had to be paid weekly and on time; there was a night-time curfew and a set of moral standards for residents; and the flats could not be used for certain trades. The estate had one toilet for every two flats, with baths and laundry facilities on the top floor. Within twenty years of its establishment the trust housed 14,600 people in 3,500 dwellings; as of 2023 it had 107,000 homes and 220,000 residents across London and the Home Counties. George Peabody died in 1869 at the Belgravia home of a friend; initially buried in Westminster Abbey, he was interred a year later in his home town of South Danvers, Massachusetts - which had been renamed Peabody in his honour the year before his death. George Peabody is regarded today as the father of modern philanthropy.