The International Date Line (IDL) is one of the weirdest things on the map—it’s not a straight line at all! It zigzags to avoid splitting countries, islands, and even some communities into different days, which would be super confusing. Imagine one side of your house being a day ahead of the other! It mostly follows the 180° longitude line but takes big detours around places like Kiribati and Samoa so they can stay on the same date as their neighbors. This bending of the line makes it look strange, but it helps people in those areas keep their calendars in sync. Without the IDL, figuring out the time and date for travel, shipping, and even calling someone would be a chaotic mess. Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/ Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Telegram: https://t.me/bright_side_official Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
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00:00So get this, Taylor Swift takes a flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo that leaves at 10 a.m.
00:06on February 20th.
00:07She's on the plane for 12 hours, but she lands only at 2 p.m. the next day in Tokyo.
00:13That's a 28-hour difference!
00:16So how did this time warp happen?
00:18Well, it's all because of this wonky line.
00:21This is the International Date Line.
00:24You know, that imaginary line that slices the globe in half and decides who gets to
00:28celebrate the New Year first?
00:30It's the Line Islands, by the way.
00:33But crossing this line doesn't just make you feel like you've stepped into a transporter.
00:38It actually changes your date.
00:40Cross from east to west and boom, it's 24 hours later.
00:44If you travel in the opposite direction, crossing the line from the western side to the eastern
00:49side, you go back an entire calendar day.
00:52Now you'd think that the International Date Line would be a nice, neat, straight line
00:57in the ocean where the time zones switch.
01:00But in reality, it's as if someone took a ruler and said, let's make this complicated.
01:05The line zigzags all over the place, wrapping around islands and causing all sorts of head-scratching
01:11confusion.
01:12For instance, Big Diomede Island and Little Diomede Island are only 2.5 miles apart but
01:19have a 21-hour time difference.
01:22Things can get a little more complicated depending on which time zone a country follows.
01:27For example, if you travel 659 miles across the date line from Baker Island to Tokelau,
01:33you must add 25 hours.
01:35In other words, that's one day and one hour.
01:38And if that doesn't sound weird enough for you, wait, it gets crazier.
01:43When it's 6 o'clock in the morning on Thursday in New York, it's still Wednesday night in
01:47American Samoa.
01:49Meanwhile, over in Kiribati, it's already Friday.
01:52Yep, we're talking about three different calendar days happening at the same time because
01:57of this one imaginary crazy line.
01:59This phenomenon occurs every day, between 10 o'clock and 10.59 in the morning.
02:05So why does the international date line look so ridiculous in the first place?
02:10Well, great question.
02:12Although these zigzags may seem completely arbitrary, they actually have a logical basis.
02:18It's pretty much a made-up concept based on the Earth's rotation.
02:22The Earth is always spinning, thank goodness, and it takes about 24 hours, or a day, to
02:27complete one full rotation.
02:28To keep things in sync, people took the Earth and divided it into 24 time zones, each 15
02:35degrees apart.
02:36But what is the starting point for a day on Earth?
02:39Basically, people needed to figure out which of these 24 zones, or lines, would be the
02:44starting line, or the chronocenter.
02:47They needed a reference point, a line where they could begin adding or subtracting time
02:51as you move east or west.
02:54That line is what we now call the prime meridian.
02:57But here's the catch.
02:59Deciding where to put this starting line, the prime meridian, is totally arbitrary.
03:04The idea of establishing a line where days begin and end goes all the way back to at
03:08least the 1300s.
03:10Back then, mapmakers were doing their own thing, picking their own east-west dividing
03:15lines called meridians, which, by the way, is just a fancy Latin word for midday.
03:21Without a universal standard for when a day officially started or ended, sailors on long
03:26voyages just had to wing it, figuring out how to handle the time they were gaining or
03:31losing along the way.
03:33So in 1884, people decided to organize this whole mess.
03:3825 nations gathered at the prestigious International Meridian Conference in the United States with
03:43one big goal.
03:45To decide on a line that would serve as the official prime meridian.
03:49Finally.
03:50Like it or not, they were determined to create the International Date Line that the whole
03:54world would accept and would follow from that point forward.
03:58The prime meridian was established in Greenwich, England, and the International Date Line was
04:03placed on the opposite side, running through the 180th meridian.
04:07Well, sounds simple, right?
04:10But that's when the nightmare really began.
04:12The chosen International Date Line didn't just wander through uninhabited areas, oh
04:17no!
04:18It split some countries in half and created all sorts of chaos.
04:22I mean, if you divide the world with a completely straight vertical line, you end up with situations
04:27where half of a country is one day ahead and the other half is one day behind.
04:32Take Kiribati, for example.
04:34The country is primarily centered in the Gilbert Islands, which sits just west of the International
04:39Date Line.
04:40However, in 1979, their territory got a little bigger with the Phoenix and Line Islands,
04:46which are way east of the date line.
04:48Suddenly, Kiribati was straddling the International Date Line.
04:52This created a bit of a headache for businesses.
04:55Folks on either side could only communicate by radio or phone for four weekdays a week.
05:00To fix this quirky situation, Kiribati decided to skip Saturday, December 31, 1994, right
05:07off the calendar.
05:08So Friday, December 30, turned into Sunday, January 1, 1995.
05:14And just like that, New Year's Day came a day early!
05:18After that, the date line moved eastward to go around the entire country.
05:23So the same thing that happened to Kiribati happened to other countries as well.
05:27For example, when they got to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, yep, the line made another
05:32detour to include them.
05:33And when they got south of the equator, guess what?
05:37They made another eastward bend to cover even more islands.
05:39And that's pretty much why the straight line started to get a bit ziggy-zaggy.
05:44This wonky line is designed to avoid land as much as possible, so there's less hassle
05:48when it comes to changing days.
05:51So no, you can't stand between the International Date Line, like having one foot in one day
05:56and the other in the next.
05:58But you can cross it by boat.
06:00In fact, some fancy trans-Pacific cruises even offer a time travel package for adventurous
06:06travelers who want to cross the line and jump into the future.
06:11In the end, the International Date Line looks this ridiculous because it was constructed
06:15based on a series of arbitrary decisions, historical quirks, and a whole lot of confusion.
06:21But it's not just because people organized it in the 19th century that there is no confusion
06:26regarding time zones today.
06:29Another thing that the Prime Meridian establishes is Coordinated Universal Time, the famous
06:34UTC.
06:35Now, UTC never changes for Daylight Savings Time or anything else.
06:40However, in 1908, Canada decided to spice things up by creating Daylight Saving Time,
06:46or DST.
06:48Their idea was to set the clocks one hour ahead of standard time to make better use
06:52of sunlight in the spring and summer and fall evenings.
06:56The idea was so brilliant that most countries jumped on board, but not everyone.
07:01Just look at Nepal – they have never ever used the Daylight Savings Time, which means
07:06their clocks do not change throughout the entire year.
07:09As you probably know, countries with large territories often have more than one time
07:14zone.
07:15Just like the United States, which has 11 time zones.
07:18Australia has 9, while India… well, India is a special case.
07:22Look, India is a big country with an area that stretches around 1,800 miles from west
07:28to east.
07:29So it should have 3 time zones in total.
07:32But they only have one.
07:33This means that the sun rises almost 90 minutes earlier in Dong, in the Far East, than in
07:39Guharmati, in the West.
07:42And why do they have only one time zone?
07:44Well, basically, because they can.
07:47Just remember that the international dateline and time zones are invisible, artificial,
07:52and now you know, totally arbitrary.
07:55So if a country wants to stick with just one time zone to simplify processes and business
07:59operations within its border, then, hey, why not?
08:04That's it for today!
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