We posted this on our twitter feed on Friday, but it was such a fascinating video, I thought it deserved a bigger write up.

A visual tour around London’s most quirky ‘hidden’ landmarks by Youtuber ChrisCLondon, it’s full of incredible facts and quirks and features locations that even most lifelong Londoners won’t know about. My Londonphile geeky brother only got 8 out of 10, failing on his knowledge of the Victorian Pet Cemetery and the minature bronze St Paul’s Cathedral…

My personal favourite story is the one about the tank – A property developer was denied planning permission by the council to build a block of flats on the Old Kent Road. Infuriated, he reapplies, but this time with plans for a tank. Thinking he means septic tank, the council grant permission, only for the man to install a genuine T34 tank from the First World War on the patch of land. Painted bright pink. With the gun tower pointing towards the council offices.

We found this video on the VisitLondon blog. Aside from posting cool videos, VisitLondon have helped Metrotwin considerably by adding loads of great places and lists to our site. These are some of the best:

Toy Shops – There is more to London than Hamley’s y’know..

Arts and Craft Shops in London – To help you stand out from the Primarni crowd.

City Farms – Escape from the rat race and pet a pig.

Eco-Friendly London – Glorious ways to go green.

Unique Cinemas – For when you want to see something that didn’t cost billions and doesn’t feature Adam Sandler, a talking monkey and a highly implausible series of events.

I just read this great article in Gawker (which itself is inspired by this article in the NYT) about the many, many ways you can die in New York. It turns out the city has over 6,000 codes to classify causes of death, which covers a huge amount of bases, from seemingly unfortunate minor accidents like ‘contact with non-powered hand tool (ie, a screwdriver) and ‘bitten by rat’ to the rather more epic ‘victim of cataclysmic storm’.

Gawker has a great list of the more bizzare codes, but I think my favourite has to be X51 – ‘Prolonged stay in weightless enviroment’.

Giant space rodents? It’s a shame it isn’t wielding a spanner as that would make classification SO much easier.

Photo by x-ray delta one used under a Creative Commons License

Random London graffiti, photographed by Abbi Kemp

Abbi is a  freelance photographer based in London, specialising in portrait and travel photography. We love her eye for composition and colours, and best of all, she excels in taking photos of London and New York! We’ll be featuring some of her photos on the site over the coming weeks, but should you be of an impatient nature, you can check out her website and her Flickr page.

Do you have any cool shots of London or New York? Send ‘em to me via the editor@metrotwin.com email address and if we like, we’ll put on the site!