Day 40: Approaching The International Date Line


So today is Valentine's Day - February 14th. On Thursday 15th, we visit Pago Pago in American Samoa. The next day, Saturday 17th, we're in Samoa. Wait! What happened to Friday 16th February? Well - it disappeared and fell victim to the International Date Line (IDL). As we're steadily traveling westwards, every few days, we set our clocks back an hour. We're currently 6 hours behind the US-East coast. It's like stealing from Father Time if you keep sneaking in 25-hour days. At some point, you have to pay it back, and that's the purpose of the IDL.

The IDL was internationally accepted at the Meridian Conference in Washington DC in 1884 as an imaginary line that runs from the North Pole to the South Pole at 180 degrees, opposite the 0-degree longitude line through Greenwich, London, UK. The agreement allows individual nations, and even islands, to decide which side of the line they want to be on. If you look at the IDL, it zig-zags between Russia and Alaska, the final zag to the left including the Aleutian chain. Alaska was once on the west of the IDL and moved to the east in 1867 when the US purchased it from the USSR. October 19th became the 18th, and that was "Alaska Day".

After resuming its 180-degree course south, the line runs straight for a few thousand miles until it reaches Kiribati and, specifically, Millenium Island. That's the weird-looking shape poking to the right (east), looking like a poorly drawn anteater. Caroline Island changed its time zone in 1994 and became the first place on Earth to reach January 1st, 2000. The last change was about 10 years ago when Samoa moved from the east of the IDL to the west, hoping to better align with Australia and New Zealand as its primary trading partners.


Final thought .. those of you who have read Jules Verne's "Around The World In Eighty Days" (spoiler!!) may remember that Phineas Fogg arrived back in London thinking he'd lost his bet. But, in fact, returned a day earlier than he calculated because he crossed the IDL. 

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