18th June: Waterloo Bridge opened

Waterloo Bridge in London opened on this date in 1817. 10 things you may not know about Waterloo Bridge:

1. It stands between Blackfriars Bridge and Hungerford Bridge, and thanks to its position on a bend of the River Thames, views from this bridge are said to be the best views of London you can get from the ground.
2. Before it was opened, it was called Strand Bridge.
3. The day it opened, 18 June 1817, was the second anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, and was given the name Waterloo Bridge in honour of that.
4. The bridge that stands today is the second Waterloo Bridge. The original was badly damaged by flowing water and needed to be replaced with a more robust design. The new Waterloo Bridge was fully opened in 1945.
5. It has been a Grade II listed structure since 1981.
6. It is sometimes referred to as "the ladies bridge," because the work force was largely female.
7. In the 1840s, Waterloo Bridge was a popular place to commit suicide. Thomas Hood's poem, The Bridge of Sighs is about a prostitute who killed herself there. In 1841, there was also an accidental death when an American showman called Samuel Gilbert Scott was performing a stunt which involved hanging from a scaffold on the bridge, and it went horribly wrong.
8. It was the only bridge on the Thames to be damaged by German bombers in World War II.
9. The beams of the new bridge are made from Portland Stone from the South West of England, and the stone cleans itself whenever it rains.
10. When the old bridge was demolished, some of the original stone was shipped off to Commonwealth countries. Two of the stones are now part of a bridge in Canberra, Australia, while still more were used to build a monument to Paddy the Wanderer, a friendly dog which lived around the wharves of Wellington, New Zealand.