Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Samoa, international dateline

Samoa plans to leap 24 hours into the future, erasing a day and putting an extra kink in the international dateline, so that it can be on the same weekday as Australia, New Zealand and eastern Asia.

The island nation is planning to reverse a decision made 119 years ago to stay behind a day to help do business with American traders in California.

That choice has meant that when it's dawn on Sunday in Samoa, it's already dawn on Monday in adjacent Tonga – and fast approaching dawn on Monday in New Zealand, Australia and China.

Samoa has found its interests lying more with the Asia-Pacific region and now wants to switch back to the west side of the international dateline, which runs roughly north-to-south along the 180-degree line of longitude in the Pacific Ocean.

a long way from home . com

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