Tower Bridge Gunter made a split-second decision to accelerate, clearing a gap to drop onto the north bascule, which had not yet started to rise. There were no serious injuries. Gunter was given £10 (equivalent to £ in ) by the City Corporation to honour his act of bravery. The Hawker Hunter Tower Bridge incident occurred on 5 April 1968 when a Royal Air Force Hawker Hunter FGA.9 jet fighter from No. 1 Squadron, flown by Flt Lt Alan Pollock, flew through Tower Bridge. Unimpressed that senior staff were not going to celebrate the RAF's 50th birthday with a fly-past, Pollock decided
London Bridge Is Falling Down children in the foundations of the bridge was first advanced by Alice Bertha Gomme (later Lady Gomme) in "The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland" (1894–1898) and perpetuated by the usually sceptical Iona and Peter Opie. This was based around the idea that a bridge would collapse unless the body of a human sacrifice was buried in its foundations and that the watchman is actually a human sacrifice, who will then watch over the bridge. However, there is no archaeological evidence for any human remains in the foundations of London Bridge. Until the mid-eighteenth century the Old London Bridge