"Gore harizi rakaze rimwe" (as they say in the Shona language,"the same year can never return again").
"And I've run into something that complicates business on Earth to an incredible extent. I knew about it, but hadn't realized its full implications. It's the problem of Time Zones. There are some advantages in belonging to an off world culture. We're not slaves of the sun, and can set all our clocks to the same time, all over Titan. But on Earth!
There are four time zones -- America, Africa, Asia, Oceania -- six hours apart. So when you want to speak to anyone, or make an appointment, you have to know what zone he's in. And when you move from one zone to another, you have to put your watch ahead -- or back -- six hours.
It's very awkward and confusing, but it was even worse a couple of centuries ago; then there were twenty-four zones, one for every hour of the day!"
Arthur C. Clarke, Imperial Earth (a novel), (NY: Ballantine, 1976) p. 133
I'm a friendly sort of guy, at least I think I am, and an internationalist to boot, and so are you, aren't you? So I thought we would drink a toast to and with all the people in the world to celebrate the coming of the New Year, precisely at midnight when the old year ends and the new begins. Now, everybody knows your brother out on the west coast in California is three hours behind and not just because he's always been a little slow either. So his New Year doesn't start until it's three o'clock in the morning here. But what about the rest of the world, when does the New Year actually tippy toe onto the global earth and the first celebrants get tipsy?
Since we live on a spherical earth which is turning all the time, it is always midnight somewhere and noon on the antipodes. And just as we switch time zones, we need a place to change days. The new day can be thought as issuing out of the International Date line at midnight, or zero hours as the metric folks would have it. The International Date line is close to but not identical with the meridian of 180 degrees. That's 180o East, or West, it does not matter, it's the same. The International Date line bends around the Chukchi Peninsula, which is the easternmost extension of Russia in Asia, but is really in the Western Hemisphere. There they are eleven hours ahead of Moscow and thirteen of Greenwich, but they keep the same day. So that is where the New Year begins, eighteen hours ahead of Cincinnati and Eastern Standard Time, which is 6 AM on New Years Eve. A little early to start drinking, don't you think. Well, maybe you don't.
You wouldn't want to visit the Chukchi Peninsula. That is eastern Siberia, close to the Arctic Circle, and very cold in winter. For a warmer place try the islands of Tonga in the South Seas near the Tropic of Capricorn, which literally keep time with eastern Siberia. Besides it's summer there. Tonga is an independent Kingdom under Taufa'ahau Tupou IV. The people have a reputation of being well educated and friendly to tourists.
That at least was how it was until last year. This year, however, President Te buroro Tito of Kiribati moved the International Dateline. He did, for it was a campaign pledge, and he at least is one politician who keeps a promise. Kiribati is an archipelago, which sprawls across 2,200 miles of the Pacific Ocean, across the Equator, and across the International Dateline from the eastern to the western hemisphere. Or used to, it still sprawls, but now all of the Republic and every one of its islands is on the eastern side of the International Dateline. The easternmost inhabited island, Kiritimati, pronounced Christmas, is east of Honolulu, and 72 solar minutes ahead of Tonga and the Chukchi Peninsula. There, for the first time the year will start at 5 AM Cincinnati time, 19 hours ahead of the United States. You didn't know we were that far behind, did you?
From there it's a regular beat. Every hour the New Year reaches another time zone. In Eastern Standard Time, at 7 AM, New Zealand, at 8 New Caledonia and the Solomons, at 9 Sydney and the whole of eastern Australia, at 10 Japan and Korea, at 11 western Australia, Peking, and the Philippines, at 12, that is noon in Cincinnati, midnight descends on Vietnam, Indonesia, and Mongolia.
One drink every hour. You think that is not so much, you can handle that, but hold it, that's not all. Many countries which straddle a time zone boundary, offset their clocks not by a full hour but by a half or a quarter. So at 6:15 PM on New Years Eve you need to drink a toast to the Chatham Islanders, at 7:30 to the people of Nauru and Norfolk Islands, and at 9:30 comes Adelaide and South Australia. Malaysia at 11:30, at 12:30 PM in Cincinnati comes Myanmar, at 1:30 the whole of India, at 2:30 Afghanistan, and at 3:30 Iran. In Nepal the New Year comes when it's 12:20 PM in Cincinnati, and you can drink to that.
Not to forget the regular, full hour time zones. When it is 1 PM here, the New Year hits western China and eastern Kazakhstan in the former USSR. At 2 its Kirghizia and Tadzhikistan (or Tajikistan), which are difficult to spell or to pronounce even if you're still sober. Then, by 3 its Iraq and Mauritius. After that Midnight falls in Saudi Arabia where they have no official time at all, but continue to use Allah's own solar time. You may drink at will as the New Year crosses the Arabian Peninsula, and every oasis and bedouin encampment reaches its own midnight. Drink here but not there, for the Kingdom is dry as the holy Quran commands.
At 4 PM the regular beat goes on as midnight comes to Turkey and Ethiopia with its neighbors. At five in the afternoon we can celebrate the New Year with much of Africa, the Balkan peninsula and Finland. By 6 PM midnight falls on most of Europe, and by 7 our time, it is New Year in Great Britain, Iceland, Portugal and westernmost Africa. This makes 1996 official for Britain is Universal Time, used by all who span the time zones like long distance pilots and short wave ham operators. It used to be Greenwich Time after the Royal Astronomical Observatory in that part of London. They moved the Observatory out of the London smog, but they had to leave the zero meridian where it was. We can now relax a little as the New Year crosses the Atlantic Ocean.
At 8 it hits the Azores and Guinea-Bissau, and at 9 the Cape Verde Islands. And if you don't remember where the Cape Verdes are, by now you don't really care. Liberia is always different, so midnight there comes at 8:15 our time. By 10 PM the New Year makes its first land fall in easternmost America, yes, that's eastern Brazil. If you're still on your feet you can now drink to another bunch of mavericks. At 10:30 it's Newfoundland which is a Province of Canada, at 10:40 Surinam, at 10:45 Guyana, and at 10:50 French Guiana, then at eleven the New Year comes to Atlantic Standard Time and we celebrate with such friends as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Venezuela, Chile and Bolivia.
In another hour it is finally midnight in Cincinnati, as well as in Panama, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Then the New Year winds down across the rest of the USA. At 1 AM on the first day of 1996 New Year comes to Texas and most of Mexico, at 2 to the mountain states and Alberta, and at 3 to the West Coast and the Yukon territory.
That is not the end yet. Only Pitcairn Island and the town of Yakutat in Alaska celebrate the New Year at 4 in the morning our time. Pitcairn has less than one hundred inhabitants, and Yakutat does not have many more, so they need all the help and support they can get. At 5 AM the New Year comes to most of Alaska, Hawaii, and the Tuamotu Archipelago with Tahiti in French Polynesia, and at 5:30 it's midnight in the Cook Islands. Finally, at 6 AM our time, twenty-five hours after we started, the New Year comes for the last time to the westernmost ends of America, the Aleutian Islands, to Midway, and American Samoa.
If you're still on your feet at this time, you deserve everything you got. Try to count the time zones, and thus the number of drinks we have taken. Be glad the New Year comes in winter, else we would have to consider all the folks who use Daylight Savings Time. And at that, we ignore all that summer time switching in the southern hemisphere, who knows what those folks do? We've gone all around the globe, as the King asked the wise man: "How long will it take me to ride around the Earth?" "If you saddle up at Sun rise," the expert answered, "and ride with the Sun, it will take but a day." And if you liked our trip, next year we shall drink to every nation in their own particular tipple when the right time comes. With vodka to the Russians, rum to the Caribbean, Scotch to the Scots, and wine from every clime to the people of the region. Skoal, Prosit Neujahr and Auld Lang Syne.
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