40 Fun Facts About Tower Bridge

What was Albert Gunter driving when Tower Bridge began to open beneath him, forcing him to jump the gap?

A double-decker bus, the number 78, dropped onto the far leaf, which had not yet started to rise. Gunter was given £10 for his quick thinking.

Robert McCulloch, wrongly said to have thought he was buying Tower Bridge, shipped London Bridge to which US state?

Arizona's Lake Havasu City got the 1830s crossing to help sell building plots, and both McCulloch and the official who arranged the sale denied any mix-up.

One of the lampposts on Tower Bridge is a disguise for what, connected to an old guardroom below?

A chimney, painted to match the real lamps, carried smoke up from a fireplace in a guardroom inside one of the piers.

Which colour was Tower Bridge originally painted, a shade rumoured to be Queen Victoria's favourite?

Chocolate brown lasted until the bridge was camouflaged in battleship grey before the Second World War. The original paint can still be seen inside.

Which US president's motorcade was split in two when Tower Bridge opened for a sailing barge?

Bill Clinton was returning from lunch with Tony Blair in 1997 when the barge Gladys arrived on schedule and the roadway rose, to the alarm of his security staff.

Which animals did Freeman of the City Jef Smith drive across Tower Bridge in 1999, claiming an ancient right?

Sheep, just two of them, made the crossing as Smith protested that the rights of older citizens were being eroded.

A Fathers 4 Justice campaigner closed Tower Bridge in 2003 by climbing a nearby crane dressed as which superhero?

Spider-Man stayed up the crane for six days as part of a fathers' rights protest. Police shut the crossing and nearby roads in case he fell.

Tower Bridge looks like a stone castle, but its towers are built around a hidden frame of which material?

Steel, more than 11,000 tons of it, forms the skeleton. The stone cladding was added to protect it and to match the Tower of London.

By law, what must be hung from Tower Bridge by day when work reduces the headroom beneath it?

A bundle of straw warns passing crews that there is less room than normal to squeeze beneath the roadway, and a white light takes over after dark.

Which fictional spy escorted the Queen in a helicopter flown through Tower Bridge for London's 2012 opening ceremony?

James Bond, played by Daniel Craig, collected the Queen from her London home in Danny Boyle's short film Happy and Glorious.

Robbie Maddison backflipped across the partly raised roadway of Tower Bridge in 2009 while riding what?

A motorbike carried the Australian stuntman over the gap at about 40 mph, with the raised leaves serving as his take-off and landing ramps.

Which film starring Robert Downey Jr. stages its final fight high on a half-built Tower Bridge?

Sherlock Holmes ends with the detective chasing Irene Adler to the top of the unfinished crossing, where he fights the villain Lord Blackwood.

Which giant symbol was mounted on Tower Bridge in the summer of 2012, before a second emblem replaced it?

The Olympic rings were taken down once the Games ended, and the emblem of the Paralympics went up in their place.

Two Austrians leapt from a helicopter in 2024 and flew between the towers of Tower Bridge wearing what?

Wingsuits took Marco Fürst and Marco Waltenspiel through at up to 246 km/h, a first for the landmark, about 35 metres above the water.

The central span of Tower Bridge, whose two counterweighted leaves pivot upward, is which type of movable bridge?

Bascule comes from a French word for a seesaw or balance, and each leaf is weighted so that little force is needed to raise it.

Which Victorian architect designed Tower Bridge but died a year into construction and never saw it finished?

Horace Jones died in 1887, and the brick facing he had planned gave way to the ornate stonework seen today.

Which future king, then Prince of Wales, officially opened Tower Bridge in June 1894?

Edward VII had laid the foundation stone eight years earlier. The party for the opening was so grand that tidying up afterwards took a whole week.

Under an 1885 law that still applies, which users of Tower Bridge always have priority over the others?

Ships can ask for the roadway to be raised at any hour of the day or night, and the same law bars the bridge from charging them.

Which footballer drove a speedboat carrying the torch beneath Tower Bridge during the London 2012 opening ceremony?

David Beckham steered the craft, named Max Power, as the roadway lifted and fireworks poured from the walkways above.

Which American sitcom sent two of its characters across Tower Bridge during a two-part London wedding episode?

Friends shows Joey and Chandler crossing on an open-top bus, in the episode where Joey buys a Union Flag hat from Richard Branson.

Which RAF jet did Alan Pollock fly between the roadway and walkways of Tower Bridge in an unauthorised 1968 protest?

Hawker Hunter pilot Pollock was angry that the RAF's 50th anniversary had no flypast. He was arrested on landing and invalided out without a court martial.

Frank McClean made the first flight through Tower Bridge in 1912, passing under the walkways in which kind of aircraft?

A seaplane took McClean between the roadway and the walkways, but on the return trip a sidewind tipped him into the river, unhurt.

Tower Bridge engineer John Wolfe Barry was the son of Charles Barry, the architect best known for which London landmark?

The Palace of Westminster, home of the Houses of Parliament, and the bridge bookend central London as the most famous works of father and son.

The architect of Tower Bridge also designed which London landmark, a filming location for the first Harry Potter film?

Leadenhall Market, with its ornate painted roof, stood in for the streets around the Leaky Cauldron and Diagon Alley.

Which engineer, famous for London's Victorian sewer system, had a design for Tower Bridge rejected for lack of headroom?

Joseph Bazalgette was one of more than fifty entrants, and none of their designs won support until a lifting bridge was proposed in 1884.

Tower Bridge was designed to resist fierce winds after an 1879 rail bridge collapse over which Scottish river?

The Tay rail crossing fell in a storm as a train passed over, killing everyone aboard, and later designs had to allow for far stronger winds.

Sir William Arrol's firm made the metal frame of Tower Bridge in which Scottish city and sent it on by sea?

Glasgow's Arrol company also built the Forth Bridge, and many of its workers moved to London to put the same skills to use.

The towers of Tower Bridge are faced with Portland stone and which other rock, quarried in Cornwall?

Granite and pale Portland stone hide the metal skeleton, a facing chosen so that the bridge would sit well beside the Tower of London.

Before electricity took over in the 1970s, which kind of engine drove the pumps that raised the roadway of Tower Bridge?

Steam from coal-fired boilers, stoked around the clock, drove pumping engines that are still on show in the engine rooms.

What was added to the high-level walkways of Tower Bridge in 2014, strong enough to hold two black taxis?

Glass floors let visitors look straight down at the traffic on the roadway and the river far below.

The high-level walkways of Tower Bridge, closed in 1910, had a reputation for prostitutes and which criminals?

Pickpockets had little company up there, because the walkways could only be reached by stairs and few ordinary walkers bothered to climb them.

Until the 1960s, the law required which vessel to stand by at Tower Bridge to help craft in danger?

A tugboat was kept on station for roughly seventy years after the opening, on hand for any vessel that got into trouble passing through.

At the feast marking the opening of Tower Bridge, each of the 1,200 workmen was given which commemorative gift?

Pipe and tobacco went to the men after dinner, while each of their wives was handed a box of sweetmeats.

Which Second World War cruiser, now a floating museum, has been moored just upstream of Tower Bridge since 1971?

HMS Belfast passed under the raised roadway in October 1971 and opened to the public days later, on Trafalgar Day.

Armstrong Mitchell built the original hydraulic machinery of Tower Bridge at its works in which English city?

Newcastle was home to William Armstrong, inventor of the hydraulic accumulator, whose Elswick factory also turned out cranes, guns and warships.

Which country built a Tower Bridge replica that has four towers instead of two and no lifting mechanism?

China's copy stands in the city of Suzhou, and a 2019 renovation gave it a look that differs from the London original.

The two side spans of Tower Bridge, running from each bank to the towers, are which type of bridge?

Suspension chains carry both side spans, and although the lifting middle gets the fame, most of the structure is held up this way.

Which body is the sole trustee of the centuries-old charity that owns and maintains Tower Bridge?

City of London Corporation runs a charity first set up to look after London Bridge, which went on to build Tower Bridge and still pays for its upkeep.

Tower Bridge links Tower Hamlets on one bank of the Thames with which London borough on the other?

Southwark's half of the crossing was given listed status in 1949, more than twenty years before the half on the opposite bank.

In 1954 Tower Bridge lifted for which royal yacht, bringing Queen Elizabeth II home from a six-month Commonwealth tour?

Britannia sailed through beneath the words 'welcome home' displayed on the walkways, at the end of the yacht's first royal tour.