I was wondering if it was possible for the entire planet to observe the same day of the week simultaneously at any point of time during a day. I did some google searches and found out that the UTC offsets range over a 26 hour time period. If the time taken by earth to complete one rotation is 24 hours, why do we need to have 26 hour range instead of 24? I also saw that the GMT has 24 hour range of offsets. I am pretty confused by all of this.
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The time zones UTC+13 and UTC+14 did not exist until 1994. Before that, time zones went from UTC+12 to UTC-12: 24 hours. However, the pacific island nation of Kiribati decided they wanted their date to match their neighbours more closely, so they changed from UTC-11 to UTC+13. Several other islands around Kiribati then did something similar.
So the 26-hour span of the time zones is more political than geographical.
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