The tiny Pacific nation of Samoa (population: 179,000) is going to do something amazing: travel forwards in time by a single day.
Or, looking at it another way, they’re going to switch timezones, and jump from one side of the International Date Line to the other.
Instead of being the last country in the world to see the sunset each day, Samoa will become one of the first (along with its neighbours Kiribati and Tonga) to see the sunrise.
Samoans will go to bed on December 29th this year, and wake up the next morning on December 31st. Anyone celebrating their birthday on December 30th will just have to go without.
Why change? Samoa changed timezones once before, back in 1892, with the intention of getting their day more closely aligned with the US west coast.
But Samoa’s closest neighbours, and most frequent partners for trade and culture, are New Zealand and Australia. More Samoans live in New Zealand than in Samoa itself. Until now, the two countries have been a day apart, making business more difficult. The time jump should fix that.
The only remaining problem is for anyone who’s booked flights to Samoa on December 30th. Depending what direction you’re flying from, you’ll either be losing a day, gaining a day, repeating a day, or just vanishing into the time vortex in a puff of smoke. So, depending on when you read this: you have been / will be / have not been warned.
(Via The Daily Telegraph)
