In December 1689, King William III ordered a road built through Hyde Park because his asthma couldn’t tolerate London’s smoke. He had it lit with three hundred oil lamps, making it England’s first illuminated highway. He called it La Route du Roi. Londoners called it Rotten Row. For the next two centuries, it was where the city went to be seen, to be judged, to fall off horses into the Serpentine, and occasionally to ride blind at full gallop. The King’s Asthma In...
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