1870 – The world’s first underground tube railway, (the Met had been the first underground non-tube railway) Tower Subway, opened in London, running from Lower Thames street to Vine Street. It closed after 4 months of operation.
http://books.google.com/books?id=UgcHBtYPYy0C&pg=PA113#v=onepage&q&f=false
1880 – Parliament officially adopted Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as the official time of Great Britain.
http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/info/gmt.htm
1902 – Mina Spiegel Rees was born in Ohio and became one of the earliest female computer pioneers. She ran the Office of Naval Research, where she organized work on early computers like the Harvard Mark I.
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Rees.html
Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.