London Underground (or London Tube) is certainly one of the British capital's landmarks. The first underground electric railway, the City and South London, which ran from near the Bank of England under the Thames to the South Bank, opened in 1890.It was the first line to be called 'the Tube'. Tube carriages originally had buttoned upholstery and no windows and were nicknamed 'padded cells'.
When the first escalator was installed on the London Underground, to reassure people that it was safe, a man with a wooden leg called 'Bumper' Harris was hired to travel up and down it continuously for a week.