"What time is it?" used to be a surprisingly tricky question to answer in North America. Before Nov. 18, 1883, every city and town kept its own local time, set by the position of the sun. That meant ...

American and Canadian railroads enacted time zones — a concept that schedules all aspects of life today — on this day in history, Nov. 18, 1883. The rail industry's creation of time zones was a brazen ...