On Time Zones
I was recently looking at a calendar of holidays around the world and an interesting point struck me. Take, for example, Canada Day. Canada Day is a national holiday celebrated in Canada on July 1’st. However, if plotting it on an international calendar, when does it occur? Well, Canada spans six time zones which are five and a half hours from end to end. If one were in London, UK, one could say that Canada day spans from 3:30am July 1’st until 8am July 2′nd. If you happen to be in Canada, and not at one extreme end or the other, it actually could be said to span from June 30′th to July 2′nd - 3 days!
Don’t even get me started about daylight savings. It’s these details of the real world that keep programmers up at night.
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