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For the convenience of the countries/islands that would fall on the line. If you look at the map, it zigzags around land in the ocean. It’d be really inconvenient to live on an island in the pacific where it’s one day on one half and a day earlier/ later on the other or a group of islands on different days
Convenience, largely
Some nations, particularly the island nation of Kiribati, wanted to be all on the same side of the international date line. That change puts the Line Islands (UTC+14) at the same time as Hawaii, but an entire day ahead.
For the convenience of the countries/islands that would fall on the line. If you look at the map, it zigzags around land in the ocean. It’d be really inconvenient to live on an island in the pacific where it’s one day on one half and a day earlier/ later on the other or a group of islands on different days
For the convenience of the countries/islands that would fall on the line. If you look at the map, it zigzags around land in the ocean. It’d be really inconvenient to live on an island in the pacific where it’s one day on one half and a day earlier/ later on the other or a group of islands on different days
Convenience, largely
Some nations, particularly the island nation of Kiribati, wanted to be all on the same side of the international date line. That change puts the Line Islands (UTC+14) at the same time as Hawaii, but an entire day ahead.
Convenience, largely
Some nations, particularly the island nation of Kiribati, wanted to be all on the same side of the international date line. That change puts the Line Islands (UTC+14) at the same time as Hawaii, but an entire day ahead.
You may not know this, but you are peering down a deep rabbit hole when talking about the date line and more broadly time zones. Time zones are an obvious enough concept once you understand how geography works: the main physical indicator of the time we have is that “noon” is when the sun is directly overhead, but that is different depending on where you happen to be on the planet. But what a lot of people disagree on is exactly how they ought to work – because of this, timezone lines often don’t follow the longitude lines you might expect, but political boundaries.
As others have noted, there are islands around which the International Date Line zig-zags around, usually to help islands close to Australia and New Zealand stay more synchronized with those nations.
There are also some places where there are time zones like GMT+9.5 hours or other fraction-hour offsets. This causes programmers [no small amount](https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY) of difficulty.
You may not know this, but you are peering down a deep rabbit hole when talking about the date line and more broadly time zones. Time zones are an obvious enough concept once you understand how geography works: the main physical indicator of the time we have is that “noon” is when the sun is directly overhead, but that is different depending on where you happen to be on the planet. But what a lot of people disagree on is exactly how they ought to work – because of this, timezone lines often don’t follow the longitude lines you might expect, but political boundaries.
As others have noted, there are islands around which the International Date Line zig-zags around, usually to help islands close to Australia and New Zealand stay more synchronized with those nations.
There are also some places where there are time zones like GMT+9.5 hours or other fraction-hour offsets. This causes programmers [no small amount](https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY) of difficulty.
You may not know this, but you are peering down a deep rabbit hole when talking about the date line and more broadly time zones. Time zones are an obvious enough concept once you understand how geography works: the main physical indicator of the time we have is that “noon” is when the sun is directly overhead, but that is different depending on where you happen to be on the planet. But what a lot of people disagree on is exactly how they ought to work – because of this, timezone lines often don’t follow the longitude lines you might expect, but political boundaries.
As others have noted, there are islands around which the International Date Line zig-zags around, usually to help islands close to Australia and New Zealand stay more synchronized with those nations.
There are also some places where there are time zones like GMT+9.5 hours or other fraction-hour offsets. This causes programmers [no small amount](https://youtu.be/-5wpm-gesOY) of difficulty.
Because there isn’t a single line of longitude that doesn’t intersect with some country and it would be a pain to deal with if it did
i.e. imagine if at home it’s Sunday for you but a couple of miles away, where you work it’s Monday. Or you have an appointment on the 10th, is that your 10th or the 10th on the other side of the line because there is 24 hours difference.
It’s much easier to snake the line around countries and keep it in the ocean.
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