Why is the international date line not a straight line

For the remote islands in the middle of the Pacific, they pretty much get to decide on their own which side of the line they want to be on. In fact, here's a current map. Back in , Samoa decided that it was going to skip December 30 entirely by jumping over the International Date Line, for money-related funsies. The logistics, according to The New York Times , is enough to make your head spin:. So why was Samoa ever on the other side to begin with?

Except now the gold rush is over, and the Asians on the other side are potentially taking Australia along with the rest of the world. Technically, Baker and Howard Island 1 — both U. And then comes the Aleutian Islands, which though technically more west than Baker or Howard Island, celebrates its time zone with Hawaii.

So if you've been paying attention, you'll notice that Samoa and American Samoa are on opposite sides, despite being neighbors. In this article, we will discuss about why International Date Line is not straight ,. North Pole and South Pole are two reference points on the Earth and with these two points, a line is drawn which lies exactly midway between the poles i. Further, we drawn a network of lines i. These lines intersect each other at right angles and create a network called a grid or graticule.

These graticule helps us to locate places on the surface of the Earth accurately. Source: http: desktop. The Earth takes 24 hours to rotate through degree longitude. Hence, two places that are 15 degree of longitude apart have a difference of one hour. As the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west. In , the Republic of Kiribati aligned the country's time zones by skipping January 1, in the portion of the country that was east of the date line.

They did this to facilitate trade with Australia and New Zealand , and Tokelau followed Samoa for the same reasons. Unlike the International Date Line, whose course is determined by the countries bordering it, the Nautical Date Line is defined by international agreements. Topics: Timekeeping , Time Zone , Geography.