London bridges across the river Thames: 8 Waterloo bridge

 Waterloo bridge

the first bridge on the site was designed in 1809-10 by John Rennie for the Strand Bridge Company and opened in 1817 as a toll bridge, before its opening it was known as 'Strand Bridge'

during the 1840s the bridge gained a reputation as a popular place for suicide attempts, in 1841, the American daredevil Samuel Gilbert Scott was killed while performing an act in which he hung by a rope from a scaffold on the bridge; in 1844 Thomas Hood wrote the poem The Bridge of Sighs about the suicide of a prostitute there  (poem available at: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-bridge-of-sighs/ )

paintings of the bridge were created by John Constable and Claude Monet

from 1884, serious problems were found in Rennie's bridge piers, after scour from the increased river flow after Old London Bridge was demolished damaged their foundations

by the 1920s the problems had increased, with settlement at pier five necessitating closure of the whole bridge while some heavy superstructure was removed and temporary reinforcements put in place

London county council decided to demolish the bridge and replace it with a new one which was partially opened on 11 March 1942 and completed in 1945

Georgi Markov was a Bulgarian dissident assassinated on Waterloo Bridge by agents of the Bulgarian secret police assisted by the KGB on September 11, 1978 when a micro-engineered pellet containing ricin was fired into his leg via an umbrella