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ARCTIC OCEAN
19th May 2011
British English edition

180° meridian
Issue Number 145
RUSSIA
CANADA
FREE
International Date Line
U. S. A.
COVER
STORY
CHINA PACIFIC OCEAN ATLANTIC
OCEAN

KIRIBATI

INDIAN
OCEAN Proposed new
Newspaper contents
AUSTRALIA International Date Line

CHILE Sticky spider feet

SAMOA American Floodgates on the
NEW Samoa
ZEALAND Mississippi
Singapore election
Samoa plans to move the International Date Line
Clever polymers

SAMOA
Moscow Victory Parade
TO JUMP A DAY INTO THE FUTURE Record-breaking climb
The prime minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa to London, the capital of the UK. This Seals’ whiskers
Sailele Malielegaoi, has announced that at was where a Royal Observatory had been Arab League chooses new
the end of this year his country will skip built in the late 1600s. Using the time at leader
one day. The country will jump from 29th the Observatory, together with specially Microsoft and Skype
December straight to 31st December. made clocks, British ships’ captains Imprisoned Chinese artist
Samoa, a Pacific island country, is were the first to be able to work out, or
Asteroid approaches
only 32 kilometres (20 miles) east of the pinpoint, exactly where they were when
International Date Line. This is an imagi- sailing across the world’s oceans. Noisy insects return
nary line that roughly follows the 180° Like a globe, the Earth can be divided LDC conference
longitude line, or meridian, in the middle up into 360°. So if the 0° line goes through Earthquake in Spain
of the Pacific Ocean. Greenwich it means the 180° line, is on Wellington’s will
The exact positions of the 0° and the opposite side of the world. USA and Pakistan
180° longitude lines around the globe As the Earth goes around the Sun
Children’s authors protest
were decided upon at a meeting held in once every 24 hours, every 15° from the
Toi Moko returned
Washington DC, the capital of the USA, 0° meridian is equal to one hour. The
in 1884. Called the International Me- area of the Earth’s surface can therefore Word Fair Trade Day
ridian Conference, it was attended by be divided into twenty-four 15° one- Book review
representatives from 25 countries, and hour time zones. Yet this means there Glossary and Sudoku prize
included several astronomers. must be a place, or line, where the day competitions
Almost everyone at the conference ‘changes’, or where one side of the line
agreed that the 0° line, or prime merid- is on a different day from the other side. subscribe at
ian, should go through Greenwich, close This is known as the International Date www.newsademic.com
19th May, 2011 Newsademic.com™ – British English Cover Story edition
Line, which runs down the centre of
the Pacific Ocean. If you cross this
line, the date changes. If you are on
the west side and cross it going east,
you go from today to yesterday. Yet
if you cross it the other way you
leap from today to tomorrow.
The Meridian Conference did not
decide exactly where the Interna-
tional Date Line or each time zone
line had to be. Yet those attending
the conference agreed that the 180°
meridian running through the mid-
dle of the Pacific Ocean would be
convenient. This is because it only
crossed a few areas of land.
Each country can make its own
decision about which time zone it’s
in. This explains why, if you look at
a flat map of the world, the marked
time zones are not always straight
lines. Many zigzag from side to side.
World time zones
If a country is small like the UK,
or long and thin like Chile, it can fit
into one time zone. However, coun-
tries that stretch many kilometres
from east to west, such as Canada,
the USA, Australia, Russia, and
China spread across several differ-
ent time zones.
However, some countries have
decided to ignore this. For exam-
ple, China has one time for the
whole country when it actually
stretches across several time zones.
This means the west of the country
is very light in the late evenings.
Russia crosses nine time zones,
although its government has consid-
ered reducing the number to five.
There have been several altera-
tions to the International Date Line
in recent years. One concerned a
widely spaced group of islands
called Kiribati. The date line ran
through the middle of the islands, so
there was a 23-hour time difference
between the two parts of the coun-
try. At the end of 1994 the I-Kiribati
government extended the date line
eastwards. Now all of Kiribati keeps
the same time.
International Meridian Conference,1884
Prime Minister Tuilaepa plans
to change which side of the Inter-
national Date Line Samoa is on.
This, he says, is necessary because
most of the country’s international
business is with Australia and New
Zealand. Many Samoans now live
in both of these countries too.
Even though Samoa is not far
from Australia, it is now 21 hours
behind Sydney, Australia’s largest
city. So when it’s Sunday in Samoa
it’s Monday in Sydney. Moving the
date line eastwards means this will
change. It will be the same day in
Samoa and Sydney, although Samoa
will be three hours ahead of the Aus-
tralian city.
This will not be the first time
Samoa has changed which side of
the International Date Line it’s on.
It was once on the same side as
New Zealand and Australia. Yet in
1892, an American trading company
persuaded the King of Samoa at the
page 2
time to switch to the American side.
To make the change, the country had
4th July twice. This is an American
national holiday, Independence Day.
Not everyone in Samoa is happy
about the proposed change – includ-
ing people born on 30th December.
This year they will have to decide
whether to celebrate their birthday
on 29th or 31st of the month!
Some who work in the tourism
business are also upset. They claim
that one way to promote Samoa to
international visitors is to say it’s
the last place in the world where the
Sun sets. After the date line change
it will be one of the first places to
see the Sun rise.
However, Prime Minister Tui-
laepa believes moving to the other
side of the date line could create
more tourist opportunities. Close to
Samoa is another island group called
American Samoa. This is not part
of Samoa, but is looked after by the
USA. American Samoa will there-
fore stay on the American side of
the International Date Line. It takes
less than one hour to fly between
the two islands. So the prime min-
ister says tourists coming to Samoa
will be able to celebrate any special
day twice. All they need do is fly to
American Samoa from Samoa at the
end of the first one. 
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