What makes Asia the East and America the West?
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In 1884 the world got together to agree on a “universal time” because the world was becoming much more connected, thanks to things like the telegraph and nation-spanning rail networks. At the time, an overwhelming majority of celestial navigation charts were drawn from the perspective of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. Most of the rest of the charts were copied from those. Most everyone agreed that since pretty much all of the trade of the world was shipped by the guiding hand of the Royal Observatory, they might as well make it the Prime Meridian, or 0 degrees Longitude, and therefore the basis for global time.
Well, almost everyone. The French insisted on using Paris as the Prime Meridian (because French) and didn’t come on board until 1911.
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