Dateline Mix-up time.
Unfortunately for many travelers crossing the Pacific Ocean, a question of, “what day is it?” commonly arises among the dazed, jet-lag stricken crowd.
How did the mystery of the international dateline come about? The Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, is the home of the site of zero degrees longitude. In 1884 there was international agreement that it would be the first point of measurement, but no one decided where each day stopped.
"If you look at the date line as it passes through the Pacific it is not a straight line because there are kinks to move it out of the way of the major land masses," said David Rooney, curator of Greenwich Observatory.
"And then as you go through the island groups of the Pacific you will see that it has changed over time, that individual groups can choose to move from one day to the next or backwards, usually not for any other reason other than they have got a new relationship with a different country, or with other islands in the Pacific," said Rooney.
Right now changing the dateline is impossible. They say that politics as much as geography determines its position. Russia and the USA may only be a few miles apart but it was decided to keep them a whole day apart by skewing the path of the line. And the Philippines hopped from one side to the other once their trade routes started to favor the U.S. instead of Europe.
We remember the rule of thumb: going east subtract a day, going west add a day. Unfortunately the dateline is fickle, with a known history of changing every so often, with countries and islands swapping sides. Noted recently was Kiribass who decided to move itself onto one side of the dateline in 1995 and acquired fame as the first place on earth to see the new millennium.
"It's a strange experience but it's not a particularly difficult one." Rooney told CNN.
"As the Earth rotates and as different times are held in different parts of the world, there is a point where the time is the same but you have to change the day. "
Take a two hour flight from Tonga to Samoa and you end up arriving the day before you left. All of it is mind-boggling really.
How did the mystery of the international dateline come about? The Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, is the home of the site of zero degrees longitude. In 1884 there was international agreement that it would be the first point of measurement, but no one decided where each day stopped.
"If you look at the date line as it passes through the Pacific it is not a straight line because there are kinks to move it out of the way of the major land masses," said David Rooney, curator of Greenwich Observatory.
"And then as you go through the island groups of the Pacific you will see that it has changed over time, that individual groups can choose to move from one day to the next or backwards, usually not for any other reason other than they have got a new relationship with a different country, or with other islands in the Pacific," said Rooney.
Right now changing the dateline is impossible. They say that politics as much as geography determines its position. Russia and the USA may only be a few miles apart but it was decided to keep them a whole day apart by skewing the path of the line. And the Philippines hopped from one side to the other once their trade routes started to favor the U.S. instead of Europe.
We remember the rule of thumb: going east subtract a day, going west add a day. Unfortunately the dateline is fickle, with a known history of changing every so often, with countries and islands swapping sides. Noted recently was Kiribass who decided to move itself onto one side of the dateline in 1995 and acquired fame as the first place on earth to see the new millennium.
"It's a strange experience but it's not a particularly difficult one." Rooney told CNN.
"As the Earth rotates and as different times are held in different parts of the world, there is a point where the time is the same but you have to change the day. "
Take a two hour flight from Tonga to Samoa and you end up arriving the day before you left. All of it is mind-boggling really.
Labels: dateline travel
