Short answers, pulled from the story.
The London Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1904 by a group of musicians who left Henry Wood's Queen's Hall Orchestra after management banned the practice of sending deputy players to rehearsals and concerts. The four principal founders were three horn players, Adolf Borsdorf, Thomas Busby, and Henri van der Meerschen, and a trumpeter, John Solomon.
The London Symphony Orchestra recorded John Williams's score for the first Star Wars film in 1977 and shared in three Grammy awards for the score in 1978. The orchestra also recorded subsequent films in the series and has played on more than 200 film soundtracks in total.
In 1912, conductor Arthur Nikisch insisted on taking the LSO on a North American tour, and the 100-strong orchestra was booked to sail on the Titanic. A last-minute change to the tour schedule meant the players sailed safely on the Baltic instead.
The London Symphony Orchestra has been based at the Barbican Centre in the City of London since 1982. It also operates LSO St Luke's, a music education centre in a former church near the Barbican, which opened in 2003.
Among the most notable chief conductors are Hans Richter in the orchestra's early years, Pierre Monteux and André Previn in the mid-20th century, and Claudio Abbado, Sir Colin Davis, Valery Gergiev, and Sir Simon Rattle in more recent decades. Sir Antonio Pappano became chief conductor in September 2024.
The LSO was founded on a co-operative profit-sharing model that lasted four decades, but in the post-war era the Arts Council made abandoning it a condition of receiving public subsidy. After initially rejecting this condition, the players voted in 1948 to accept it, replacing profit-sharing with salaries in order to stabilise the orchestra's finances.