Database: Tower of London

Plenty has gone on in the Tower of London that you would want to keep off an estate agent's listing – torture, murder, and whatnot – but the complex itself had become little more than a tourist attraction by the end of the 19th century.

That changed when Britain entered the Great War in 1914. The Tower was used to train soldiers and house prisoners of war. Blood was spilled at the Tower of London for the first time in over 150 years as 12 German spies were executed by firing squad between 1914 and 1915. The first to be executed, a man named Carl Hans Lody, reportedly left a note thanking his captors for their hospitality and even shook hands with each member of the firing squad before his execution.