He neglected to mention one of the reasons Britain was chosen. Yes, partly due to the British Empire being the most powerful and dominant at sea & experienced at cartography. But another reason is because Britain had already used Greenwich to standardise time over 40 years earlier, thanks to the prolific genius of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (who among other things, founded the Great Western Railway). Why the Royal Observatory? It was from here that data was collected on lunar distances (distance of the moon to stars as they appear in the sky). The distances could be used to calculate time and was vital for maritime navigation, used by numerous nations. Because knowledge of the current time at Greenwich was required to use this type of navigation, that’s where the ‘base’ time was set. So, Britain had already standardised its time nationally, and other countries around the world were already using Greenwich from which to measure time for navigation at sea. It just made sense to build upon what was already established and used by multiple nations. Also worth noting that in the 1800s the US was far from being the superpower it is today and would have held little political sway on the global stage compared to Britain.
Setting town clocks by local sundials wasn't a problem until the invention of faster than horse transport; since Britain invented trains, Britain encountered (and solved) the problem first.
Check out a BBC film called Longitude. Its about a chap called John Harrison who invented a chronometer for the Royal Navy to calculate longitude. It was the sat nav of it's day
on the royal observatory theres a red ball called "the time ball", that drops down dead on 1PM, the capatains of sailing ships on the River Thames will set their pocket watches so they can navigate the sea
@@paulcovington7062 Indeed! I haven’t seen that particular documentary, though have seen others about him before - he lived not far from where I am now and there’s a museum here with some stuff about him too. You know it’s a significant invention when it’s the solution to a challenge set by the government of the world’s foremost superpower, offering millions in modern day money. Absolutely appalling how he was treated.
We Germans have no humor, so we don't need to be told by Brits, when to eat. ( Brits and eating-- that's another story of its own). And it's also, because your great, great leader Maggie Thatcher correctly stated : "The continent is isolated!" We still laugh about that today, and you need a lot of humor to cope with that.
@@Salzbuckel * Humour. You are probably a 3 hour drive from me in England, and English is a Germanic language, so please raise your game higher than the illiterate ramblings of foreigners 6000 miles away...
I couldn't help but think of the English fella in the time zone meeting being a distant relative of Al Murray, and addressing the other dignitaries as you would expect ;D
As others have commented, he's missed the most important part about how longitude is calculated and why the Greenwich meridian is where it is. If you want a proper explanation, the Mapmen have done a great video on here called 'the longitude problem'.
Britain had already sorted out the time issue through the development of the railways about 30 years before the USA. What the USA regards as "military time" was always known, and still is, as "railway time". The UK's 24 hour clock is railway time and was developed to correct the noon-time difference between London and Bristol for trains heading west. Noon was when the shadow of a stick, in the ground, was at its shortest and it didn't need a clock for confirmation, but that was "your" noon. Timetabling rationalised everyone's noon into a useful form for travellers. Accuracy of clocks also helped. Thank you John Harrison, a genius who was betrayed and let down by the government of the time. Hero. I used to cross the date line regularly when in the navy. We would always lose a day when it was the weekend, and gain an extra work day going the other way. The company made sure we lost out in time off and they gained a free day's labour.
Points to consider (some already mentioned in comments). John Harrison, the most important person in the longitude story, started his quest in the 1720’s. Britain had already solved the railways’ local time synchronisation problem in 1840 on the Great Western Railway routes. By the 1840’s Great Britain was already using the Greenwich longitude measurements across the world - and so were many other countries. The USA didn’t have a modern navy until 1880, which is what made it important for Chester Arthur to have his international meeting to ratify what everyone was already doing for 40 years. It’s only 90 degrees from equator to either pole.
The creation of the detailed maps and charts were thanks to John Harrison. The British government put out a reward of £20,000 (about 3 million in today) in the early 1700s to anyone who could design an accurate clock to be used at sea to allow ships to correctly chart their position. John Harrison came up with the H1 sea clock, and later improved it with newer models. That H1 clock is still working today and is in the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, along with the actual Meridian line marker on the floor outside the observatory
Latitude was relatively easy. You used a sextant. But the big development was was being able to measure where you were you were in longitude. The Brits invented a system that was based on very accurate chronometers (for the time) so accurate "Dead reckoning"- time & heading vs speed. This allowed much more accurate positioning of sea craft. So to be realistic, the Brits had a system for locating yourself almost exactly in "three dimensions". The only ones that might find that difficult were in the middle of the Pacific and thus, for those times, irrelevant. So the Brits had a system to locate yourself with reasonable precision anywhere in the World. It would just be silly to use any other system.
@@DenUitvreter Yes, an accurate chronometer. Without one you just followed either a heading (without knowing how far you were off course), or a latitude line, until you ran into something that you hoped was your intended destination.
In the military we utilised something called 'Zulu' time, which is basically locked GMT and not affected by your timezone, Airlines also used this and refer to their timings as 'Zulu +1 etc. In this way we always knew the time constant and anywhere in the world related to that locked time position.
Everything he covers in the video is the basics, as an expert land navigator myself, navigating the worlds seas is a total headfeck, because on land we have a constant speed, but on the sea knots is used which is only constant if you're travelling a line of latitude, but knots is worked out by the distance between the lines of longitude, and that gap gets smaller the further you travel from the equator, so to rectify this and make sea navigation easier, they draw the world map incorrectly on purpose. He mentions 'Projection' at the start of the video, now lots of different projections are used but the most common is Mercator Projection which is the basic world map most of us are used to seeing, you should do a video on Mercator Projection as it's truly fascinating e.g. Russia is a LOT larger than it is in real life on a Mercator Projection map, but if you drew Russia to scale over Africa it would fit fully within Africa as Africa has almost twice the land area as Russia, the various projections used are also because of how difficult it is to represent a globe on flat maps, which makes it all so complex!
JayForeman's channel and video style is great, so funny and informative, and the video "why is north up" messes with your mind about things you always through were normal about maps and then realise it's not normal, just something someone decided a long time ago
Many years ago, I left Seoul at something like 11am on the 4th July, and landed in Chicago at 10am on the 4th July. The joys of flying east and east and crossing the international date line.
In terms of Jess's question "would your body feel anything?" and saying "time travel" - no; dates, times, watches, clocks, etc are just human constructs to measure time, they're not "real"; we're all going in to the future at a rate of 1 second per second, regardless of how humans choose to measure/name it,
What he will fail to tell you that britain harmonized times before the time he said because of the RAILWAYS! Britain had already started greenwich mean time in 1670 by john flamstead, chester arthur wanted to get other countries to fall into place
14:44 The time zones are odd shapes because, as far as possible, you want the boundary to have no people living on it - so you don't get one end/side of your town being an hour different from the other end/side of town.
TO CLARIFY: He incorrectly says that from the EQUATOR to the NORTH POLE, it is divide into 180° degrees - and the same between the Equator to the South Pole... What he should have said was the distance between BOTH Poles is split 180° degrees! From th Equator to the North Pole it is divided by 90° degrees _(and the same fom the Equator to the South Pole)._
@@xsirdavidianx FIRSTLY: To remember the difference between degrees of latitude and longitude, just think of a LADDER. The latitude lines are the RUNGS and the longitude lines are the "long" SIDES that hold those rungs together. Latitude lines run around the world: East and West. The 'LONGitude' lines (the ones that go up & down - North and South) are all still there, with the 0 (zero) line still passing through Greenwich, England (called the "Greenwich Meridian"). But the lines of 'latitude' (the ones that go 'round the world' - like rungs on a ladder!), are just measured in different degrees. The equator is the 0 (zero point) and moving away from it (up OR down) is measured thus: 15°, 30°, 45°, 60°, 75° and 90° degrees. Then these are SUB-DIVIDED for different location on the Earth. For example: London is NORTH of the Equator and is located at: Latitude 51.509865 and the longitude is -0.118092 - I hope that helps? 🤔
Anybody whose seen "Die Hard 3, Die Hard With a Vengeance" knows Chester A Arthur was the 24th US President, and was collector of taxes for New York City.
Hi Mike & Jess, I remember the 1st time I wondered about the International Date Line. It was when the new Supersonic Airliner Concorde was in service. I heard it mentioned possibly (on the Tv program(Tomorrow`s World)), that it was possible to arrive at your destination at a time before you left !! Mind boggling information to me at that time. :)
1. There's a wonderful book "Latitude" that outlines the creation of the Meridian: very much about the creation of an accurate time piece (there's a tie in with "Only Foools and Horses" here) which was so crucial the Royal Navy offered a prize for the sucessful inventor. 2. There were people in Victorian London who set their watches daily at Greenwich, then travelling to the city centre would set the watches of passing Londoners for a small fee: they actually made a living doing it, presumably from the commuters spilling out of the stations so they knew when to catch their trains.
WELCOME TO THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD here in Greenwich, South East London, England, My Universal Friends I lived my first 29 years just 8 miles into the heart of S E London from Greenwich in Walworth, which, itself, is just 2 miles from Central London with all its tourist attractions. Then I , moved just 12 Miles out from the heart of London towards the tranquillity of The Suburbs and now I am 4 miles from Greenwich, in the other direction, on the very edge of S E London and Kent. In 6 hours I will walk my 4 dogs in Greenwich Park. LOL
I was born in south-east London with a postcode SE5 (or zip code elsewhere) and still currently live in SE15 and Greenwich is SE10 in parts. I remember as a kid going to Greenwich Park and they had the 0 degrees latitude line marked out on the ground and so I stood over it with one foot in the east of the world and one in the west. And that is the clean version when using feet.
I'm in Aotearoa New Zealand 20 years this year, yet grew up in the UK. When communicating with parents and other family back there I have to consider that I'm at GMT+12 and often already in the next day. My birthday is now 35 hours long! ( Not 36 hours long as it's in June, which is midwinter here, so Daylight Savings applies! )
the line is actually marked on the ground outside the greenwich royal observatory so you can jump over it one side to the other. its a 20 minute drive from where I live, I really should take the kids as my father once took me when i was small. Its crazy in England, we have so much history on our doorstep but we take it for granted as we pass it every day. I used to pass tower of London and big ben/parliment square every day on my way to work and not think anything of it it was always swarming with chinese and yanks going crazy over it. There is a Pub not far from my house where Charles Dickens used reside upstairs and do his writing, the pub is older than your country by quite some years, still standing and serving beer to this day!
I lived my first 29 years just 8 miles into the heart of S E London from Greenwich in Walworth, which, itself, is just 2 miles from Central London with all its tourist attractions. Then I , moved just 12 Miles out from the heart of London towards the tranquillity of The Suburbs and now I am 4 miles from Greenwich, in the other direction, on the very edge of S E London and Kent. In 6 hours I will walk my 4 dogs in Greenwich Park. LOL
No, it's 90° North or South to reach the North pole or the South pole. If you go 180° up or down from the equator, you'll just find yourself back on the equator on the opposite side of the world.
Have you ever watched “Around the World in Eighty Days” ? This demonstrated this perfectly. Depending on which way to travel around the world you would either gain or lose a day.
Check out the story of the passenger ship SS Warrimoo that crossed the IDL at the equator on 31st December 1899 and briefly found itself being in two different days in two different months, in two different years, in two different centuries, in two different seasons (Summer and Winter) and all four hemispheres simultaneously.
Having the brain broken by the date line happened to my father. He was a travel agent and was on a world business trip where he crossed the date line back and forth a couple of times. When he got back, his wrist watch and his body clock told him it was Wednesday but it was actually Friday, he had lost 2 whole days. Took him weeks to readjust, talk about jetlag..😊
I have crossed that line on a flight from Fiji to Los Angles. It doesn’t affect your body but it screws up your brain. I arrived in LA many hours before I had left not quite the day before because of the departure time and the length of flight.
This has to be the poorest explanation of the origin of the Greenwich meridian, not least because it does not explain it at all. All the nonsense about railways was almost a century after John Harrison's work. Perhaps it was too complicated for him to explain in his limited way. Typical of the US to claim it was their idea. The Britain fixed the zero longitude for use with its Royal Navy and mercantile marine, and did not require the US to give it to them. However, US military Zulu time is based on Greenwich Mean Time.
Odd USA Centric about trains when main reason was sailing trading around the globe. Standardisation of time was needed for navigation using seextants to measure position using the stars .Royal Observatory at Greenwich 1675 was created for Royal Navy to measure and map the oceans long before trains in USA. In fact before existence of the US. This is how Royal Navy expeditions discovered countries as Australia
I live in Spain and we are on the same longitude as Britain but, around 1940, General Franco (who had led a coup d’etat against the left wing Spanish government in 1936) decided to change the country’s time zone to be in line with Nazi Germany. To this day Spain is still GMT +1, which is better for the country as it is in line with most of the rest of Europe and suits business interests. Doesn’t help me when I am watching live football from the UK as evening games sometimes finish after my usual bed time. 😴😴😴
Yeah... if ever you fly from say, LA to Sydney (and back) be prepared for date-time shocks! I've done this a couple of times and it makes life interesting... it can be fun to look up airline timetables to see how long you _think_ you'll be in the air (which will probably be a wrong guess). So, for example (LAX to SYD), you'll see things like _Dep: 18 Jan, Arr: 20 Jan_ but you've only been in the air for 15 hours...
You can figure out where the line is and stand on it in Greenwich park if you don't want to or have time to visit the observatory (its not free). Plus, I think on the DLR you pass by a line on a building which marks the Meridian. And if you go to the Maritime Museum which sits below the observatory, catch the Astrophotography of the Year exhibition, well worth it. Rather than climb up the front of the observatory...very steep, best to walk up the road beside it, the final view is I think, the best in London. Coming back into the city, forget the tube, catch an Uber Clipper boat from near the Cutty Sark, all the way in to places like Embankment, fun on a summer day (sit at the outside rear).
I only know Chester A. Arthur was the 21st US president because of Die Hard with a Vengence 😂 also the Diomede islands are either side of the international date line Little Diomede is American (off the coast of Alaska), Big Diomede is Russian, so you could stand on Little Diomede and look at Big Diomede and your actually looking into tomorrow
There was a Conference in Rome first of all that tried to sort out where the Meridian should go. Everyone seemed to agree on a solution, but once they left the Conference the Delegates just 'forgot' the decision made. Your American President, not about to give up, decided to have another Conference. Most countries attending knew they could not put the Meridian in their country - for all sorts of reasons - but there were others, like the French, who passionately fought for it. The Conference went round and round in circles until a number of countries realised that Britain hadn't even thrown its hat in the ring. Hearing this some countries were very put out and declared this was typically high-handed of the British. Nevertheless, the Conference argued that the British had been prominent seafarers for a while: most, if not all the floating commerce of the world already used British maps as the Brits had charted the world - at jaw dropping expense. The Brits had also solved the 'impossible' Longitude problem which meant, for the first time, the world's ships could navigate accurately to all places around the globe. So no more just bumping into lands and having to guess where they were! The Time Zones from Greenwich, London, made what this man calls a 'mess' more acceptable as the date line was crossed, as you said, in the middle of a vast ocean. Anyway the upshot of it all was that all countries but one (and two abstentions) voted to continue to adopt the British Meridian at Greenwich. So that is the reason the '0' is where it is. Always enjoy your reactions very much. xxx
Recommend a film/TV series called Longitude. Two stories, the quest to make a clock that kept accurate time on a ship and a shell socked soldier from WW1 who restored that clock to working order.
'Imagine who is on the 180 line' - welcome to New Zealand. Also there is a major error in the video - the the lines north or south of the equator (latitudes) only go from 0 to 90 north and 0 to 90 south, not 180 both ways.
We should force the digital denizens to always use GMT and proper English. the amount of times I've had to convert American time/date/spelling to the proper British format is taking up all my afternoon tea time.
I learned about Chester A. Arthur from Die Hard 3. And the West Wing had a comedic scene where they were trying to assess travel time/day during a flight with the President....they were confused, too.
imagine you do night shifts. youre working when the clocks change over night. your body tells you its time to go home,but the morning shift isnt there for another hour. at the other end, youve got an hour less to get the same amount of work done...
This is a typical example of why the internet can be so frustrating. There are so many inaccuracies in here it's mind boggling - not least of which it is NOT 180 degrees from equator to pole, it's 90 - and so much information has been left out it makes the video worthless - yet most people will watch it, believe it as full fact, and move on. Sheesh.
Being in NZ and on the edge of the map, we don't mind until we get cut off the map completely! Also the reason why the lines are all weird for time zones is due to countries crossing the lines but wanting to maintain one time zone for the entire country. Also the weirdness of the international date line is often that the countries in that region have trade connections that are stronger with countries on one side of the line or the other, so they choose to count themselves on one side or the other to make that relationship easier, which is where you get those weird cut outs occasionally.
If you actually visit Greenwich you can go and see the original zero meridian pillar that was set by the edge of the river Thames. It is really impressive, it is an old rotting timber post.
Daylight saving time becomes more necessary as one approaches either pole, because the length of day changes more as latitude increases. For countries close to the equator, the length of day stays pretty much the same and so daylight saving is unnecessary. Daylight saving is a method that keeps the time zone time in step with local time, which changes all through the year.
Hi guys, I'm coming to the USA for the very first time. I live in New Zealand and we fly out of Auckland Airport at 7.25pm and land in New York 10 mins later. That is to say, we fly for 16 hours yet land on the same calendar day at 7.35pm, hence we land only 10 minutes later than we left New Zealand on that same day. The reverse is true when coming back but we actually nearly lose a day that way.
You hit upon the reason why 0 degrees longitude is somewhere near Greenwich. Making sure the international date line in the Pacific was actually in the Pacific was the most important aspect. However, the Paris Meridian is effectively no different in this regard. So the choice between the two did come down to economic / political strength. In France they cling to the Paris meridian still. It's marked throughout the country with signs marking the "Meridian Vert" (Green Meridian).
You hit one of the deciding factors missing as much land as possible for the IDL. crossing the line doesnt do anything to time per se it just changed the date and time on your clock. In fact this concept was so important that it was a major plot point in the book and film Around the world in 80 Days. some of the line widths are to do with going around some countries for convenience and in other places its due the distortion of a flat map showing a round surface (IE a geodesic line)
Unpopular opinion: The reason I do not like Johnny Harris is because he never really goes deep into a subject, while presenting it as if he did all the research he did on it is all there is to know about it. And often it is very simplified. And because of that it makes people less curious, but it makes him look smarter and will make people listen to him. Basically the content was "Why is it there? There was a committee." Video done. All the rest is more confusing than helpful without the small push that you should look for more info yourself. It is shown because of the discussion at the end. He made things less clear.
I'm inclined to agree, personally I don't think he's very good. Given the length of his videos the amount of accurate information he gives is surprisingly little, so much so that it may as well be wrong. Calls a video 'why Britain is the centre of the world' and then spends 15 minutes explaining what time zones are with moderate accuracy, with the only real reason given essentially being 'because they're good at sea and maps'. The way he presented the committee makes it sound like it was America's idea, they agreed on Britain and that was that. So essentially incorrect. With that length of this vid he could have touched on maritime navigation, the chronometer, how Greenwich was established as a 'base' for time decades prior due to the observatory collecting lunar observations vital for navigation at sea by multiple nations, how Britain had already standardised its time nationally for its trains (again, decades before he makes it sound like their president came up with the idea.) But yeah I agree, kinda irks me how he takes so long to present such basic information and acts like he's done significant research into it.
I once took a flight from London to New Zealand stopping for 2 hours to re-fuel in LA. When you have a international flight stop over in the USA you get taken (still on airport security side) into a holding room with chairs, a vending machine and a bathroom and an armed guard at the door. But even though you only get to stay under armed guard in a room you still have to go through USA passport control and get your passport stamped. Anyway, I got my passport stamped on 3rd July in LA. Then I took an 18 hour flight to Auckland and I got my passport stamped in NZ as 5th July. So my passport shows me losing a whole day, and ironically after travelling through the USA I lost the 4th July.
As a child I lived near Greenwich in Blackheath. Use to go to Greenwich park - its a wonderful park btw. They have on the ground near the Royal Observatory a line and you can stand astride one foot in the West the other in the East.
People flying from Asia and Australia to the Americas cross the International Date Line. You "ground-hog" a day heading to the US and lose a day flying back. Qantas 11 leaving Sydney at 5.30pm (yes pm) Monday will land in LA at noon on the same day. Qantas 12 from LAX to Sydney will leave at 9.20pm on Tuesday and land in Sydney at 7.20am on Thursday. The actual flight is about 14 hours and all of Wednesday will come and go during the flight
If you were wondering about working over different dates, this was, well loosely, the case in the Diomede Islands that are between Russia and Alaska. Big Diomede is under Russian control and on the eastern side of the date line and Little Diomede is under American control and on the western side of the date line. Prior to WW2, there was a native population that were spread across both islands, and many of these peoples were related and worked with each other on each others islands. However, following WW2 the Soviets kicked everyone off Big Diomede to put in military folk, and and the US population on Little Diomede has been shrinking ever since.
At about 11 o'clock in the evening of 24th April 2001, I flew out of Nandi, Fiji. It was a long flight. I arrived at my destination, Honolulu, Hawaii, at (I think it was) 7.30am the same day! No, not the next morning, on the morning of THE SAME DAY!
I was born, bred and still reside in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, London. Born in the old Greenwich hospital a stone throws away from the Greenwich Royal Observatory where the cross section of the lines of longitude and latitude + start. Don't mean to blow my own trumpet guys, but am I really the centre of the Earth! I guess it is what it is.🌍 Jess, I think Mike was pulling your leg when he said "do you lose two days if you cross the International Date Line twice. But, that is the Mike that likes to "take the pi*s" and make a joke with an straight face which is typical British sarcasm there Mike. 😂I have one of those battery operated round wall clocks with the long hand, short hand and second hands on the clock. Once batteries are inserted, the hands spin around the clock to self-adjust to the correct time of day and even adjusts itself when the clocks go forward or backward by an hour. What baffles me is, how does this clock know what time to set itself in all of the different time zones around the world? I know this has something to do with radio signals sent to the clock, but it still amazes me.⏲
Greenwich is up the road from me and if you go by where the cutty sark is there is actually a metal line in the floor there so you can stand on the date line. It is also where the final battle in Thor 2 takes place, lol.
With the invention of the Chronometer (a very accurate clock) a Chronometer was placed in a sealed box on the first train of the day going west and at each station they set their clocks to the time on the trains Chronometer which meant, among other things, that they could produce an accurate timetable for trains on that route.
14:55 Some countries chose to be in different non linear timezones for diplomatic reasons. One in the Pacific chose to be with Hawaii or Australia (can't remember which way round) because it was more economically beneficial for them. And Spain matches central to eastern Europe because a former dictator there was friendly with another dictator terrorising Europe at the time (I'll let you fill the names in)
I heard one of the main reasons was is having Europe in the centre avoids having any major continents cut up. If you look at the back of the earth (opposite to England) on google Earth, it's pretty much just ocean. Do that with any the Americas/Asia, you're cutting into a lot of landmass and would have to draw it all cut up on a map. That's the most obvious reason to me at least
That's how Superman went back in time - flying fast and kept crossing that date line to go back :-) Realistically you lose a day going across the date line but get it back as go across later. I've flown to NZ a few times and I always remember coming back from NZ once leaving on a Monday morning early hours then flying for 8 hours and arriving in Hawaii on the same day at the start of the day again - we had that day twice. We were getting back the day we lost when we went there which saw us leaving on a Monday and arriving on a Wednesday after a 24 hour journey. It is very weird and part of the reason Jet Lag across such a long distance flight is very strange - your really lose track of time of day and the day itself.
I live in Sussex in the UK and there are places where you can have one foot in the Western Hemisphere and one in the Eastern hemisphere, fun photo opportunity.
I live a couple of miles from Greenwich. The Meridian line is outside of the Observatory so you can have your feet on two sides, & can confirm for Jess that nothing happens to your body. 😉
The timing of the Doolittle Raid's landings in China was partially off because the US Navy was using Dates set from Hawaii & the Chinese Nationalists were using dates set in China. These were on either side of the International Date Line. The result was that the US Army Air Core Bombers arrived a day earlier than the Chinese expected. This was a problem because they often needed to recover from under the noses of some very annoyed Imperial Japanese Army Troops.
The map behind this guy towards the end of the video isn't the typical rectangular map of the world, it made me think of a scene from the TV show "The West Wing." I found this scene on YT uploaded by Useful Clips called "Gall-Peters Projection". It might freak you out a bit but it gets more confusing if you then watch a clip from Geography King called "Map Projections Overview and How They Distort the Earth."
You mentioned about working on one side of the date line and living on the other - we are lucky that the date line runs down the middle of the Pacific so it only affects a few islands given that it's mostly ocean. Imagine how complicated it would be if land is distributed equally around the globe!
Only time I ever crossed the IDL was a flight from Auckland to LA. Very weird in that I left Auckland at 2pm and arrived in LA at 6am the same day! Closest thing to time travel
He neglected to mention one of the reasons Britain was chosen. Yes, partly due to the British Empire being the most powerful and dominant at sea & experienced at cartography. But another reason is because Britain had already used Greenwich to standardise time over 40 years earlier, thanks to the prolific genius of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (who among other things, founded the Great Western Railway).
Why the Royal Observatory? It was from here that data was collected on lunar distances (distance of the moon to stars as they appear in the sky). The distances could be used to calculate time and was vital for maritime navigation, used by numerous nations. Because knowledge of the current time at Greenwich was required to use this type of navigation, that’s where the ‘base’ time was set.
So, Britain had already standardised its time nationally, and other countries around the world were already using Greenwich from which to measure time for navigation at sea. It just made sense to build upon what was already established and used by multiple nations.
Also worth noting that in the 1800s the US was far from being the superpower it is today and would have held little political sway on the global stage compared to Britain.
Setting town clocks by local sundials wasn't a problem until the invention of faster than horse transport; since Britain invented trains, Britain encountered (and solved) the problem first.
The Royal Navy was using time for navigation long before the invention of a railway network, allowing Britannia to rule the waves.
Check out a BBC film called Longitude. Its about a chap called John Harrison who invented a chronometer for the Royal Navy to calculate longitude. It was the sat nav of it's day
on the royal observatory theres a red ball called "the time ball", that drops down dead on 1PM, the capatains of sailing ships on the River Thames will set their pocket watches so they can navigate the sea
@@paulcovington7062 Indeed! I haven’t seen that particular documentary, though have seen others about him before - he lived not far from where I am now and there’s a museum here with some stuff about him too.
You know it’s a significant invention when it’s the solution to a challenge set by the government of the world’s foremost superpower, offering millions in modern day money. Absolutely appalling how he was treated.
"The Germans don't sit down for their lunch until we say it's one o'clock" - Al Murray
Correct !!
We Germans have no humor, so we don't need to be told by Brits, when to eat. ( Brits and eating-- that's another story of its own). And it's also, because your great, great leader Maggie Thatcher correctly stated : "The continent is isolated!" We still laugh about that today, and you need a lot of humor to cope with that.
@@Salzbuckel * Humour.
You are probably a 3 hour drive from me in England, and English is a Germanic language, so please raise your game higher than the illiterate ramblings of foreigners 6000 miles away...
I couldn't help but think of the English fella in the time zone meeting being a distant relative of Al Murray, and addressing the other dignitaries as you would expect ;D
Except it was an American president Chester Arthur who proposed the meeting to decide where the zero was
Also remember that it was Britain who actually invented the railways in the first place so that may also have been in our favour.
This Harris video totally misses the mark, it wasn't about trains, it was all about safe sea navigation, and that's a problem we solved.
We also invented the world.
@@dyent 😏
However, Britain as using this long before trains. The Royal Navy used it long before
As others have commented, he's missed the most important part about how longitude is calculated and why the Greenwich meridian is where it is. If you want a proper explanation, the Mapmen have done a great video on here called 'the longitude problem'.
Britain had already sorted out the time issue through the development of the railways about 30 years before the USA. What the USA regards as "military time" was always known, and still is, as "railway time". The UK's 24 hour clock is railway time and was developed to correct the noon-time difference between London and Bristol for trains heading west. Noon was when the shadow of a stick, in the ground, was at its shortest and it didn't need a clock for confirmation, but that was "your" noon. Timetabling rationalised everyone's noon into a useful form for travellers. Accuracy of clocks also helped. Thank you John Harrison, a genius who was betrayed and let down by the government of the time. Hero.
I used to cross the date line regularly when in the navy. We would always lose a day when it was the weekend, and gain an extra work day going the other way. The company made sure we lost out in time off and they gained a free day's labour.
Points to consider (some already mentioned in comments).
John Harrison, the most important person in the longitude story, started his quest in the 1720’s.
Britain had already solved the railways’ local time synchronisation problem in 1840 on the Great Western Railway routes.
By the 1840’s Great Britain was already using the Greenwich longitude measurements across the world - and so were many other countries.
The USA didn’t have a modern navy until 1880, which is what made it important for Chester Arthur to have his international meeting to ratify what everyone was already doing for 40 years.
It’s only 90 degrees from equator to either pole.
Nothing about John Harrison and his chronometers that allowed longitude to be accurately determined?
That is another story.
Simply Britain is the centre of the earth because we are.
The clue is in the name "Great Britain" - Al Murray
I think it’s saying we are a big fat zero 😳😂
When British people say arrogant crap like that it's even more cringey than when Americans do. Please grow up.
@ get a sense of humour it was a joke!
Because we put it there - Al Murray
In Britain, up to 1839 . the time table was in chaos with trains . Intill George Bradshaw made the 1st train time table in the world.
Greenwich is lovely too , nice park and has the maritime museum and of course the meridian line 😊
Here in the UK, we all learn about GMT as kids. We know NY is -5 hrs, LA is -8 hrs, Sidney is +11 hrs etc etc.
Sydney not Sidney 😂
@@Keith-KS4ES Nah, my mate Sidney is 11 hours in front 😊
The creation of the detailed maps and charts were thanks to John Harrison. The British government put out a reward of £20,000 (about 3 million in today) in the early 1700s to anyone who could design an accurate clock to be used at sea to allow ships to correctly chart their position. John Harrison came up with the H1 sea clock, and later improved it with newer models. That H1 clock is still working today and is in the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, along with the actual Meridian line marker on the floor outside the observatory
Latitude was relatively easy. You used a sextant. But the big development was was being able to measure where you were you were in longitude.
The Brits invented a system that was based on very accurate chronometers (for the time) so accurate "Dead reckoning"- time & heading vs speed. This allowed much more accurate positioning of sea craft.
So to be realistic, the Brits had a system for locating yourself almost exactly in "three dimensions". The only ones that might find that difficult were in the middle of the Pacific and thus, for those times, irrelevant.
So the Brits had a system to locate yourself with reasonable precision anywhere in the World. It would just be silly to use any other system.
It was mostly about making an accurate enough clock, for which a huge sum of money was awarded.
@@DenUitvreter Yes, an accurate chronometer. Without one you just followed either a heading (without knowing how far you were off course), or a latitude line, until you ran into something that you hoped was your intended destination.
In the military we utilised something called 'Zulu' time, which is basically locked GMT and not affected by your timezone, Airlines also used this and refer to their timings as 'Zulu +1 etc. In this way we always knew the time constant and anywhere in the world related to that locked time position.
That's UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).
@@monksuuBut the military call it zulu.
Everything he covers in the video is the basics, as an expert land navigator myself, navigating the worlds seas is a total headfeck, because on land we have a constant speed, but on the sea knots is used which is only constant if you're travelling a line of latitude, but knots is worked out by the distance between the lines of longitude, and that gap gets smaller the further you travel from the equator, so to rectify this and make sea navigation easier, they draw the world map incorrectly on purpose. He mentions 'Projection' at the start of the video, now lots of different projections are used but the most common is Mercator Projection which is the basic world map most of us are used to seeing, you should do a video on Mercator Projection as it's truly fascinating e.g. Russia is a LOT larger than it is in real life on a Mercator Projection map, but if you drew Russia to scale over Africa it would fit fully within Africa as Africa has almost twice the land area as Russia, the various projections used are also because of how difficult it is to represent a globe on flat maps, which makes it all so complex!
JayForeman's channel and video style is great, so funny and informative, and the video "why is north up" messes with your mind about things you always through were normal about maps and then realise it's not normal, just something someone decided a long time ago
@jennaking710 - informative? It’s wrong!!!
If you remember the Al Murray video where he says the German's don't sit down to their lunch till we say it One o Clock.😂😂
Many years ago, I left Seoul at something like 11am on the 4th July, and landed in Chicago at 10am on the 4th July. The joys of flying east and east and crossing the international date line.
As a child it was always fun to jump over the lines at Greenwich.
My grandfather was in the Merchant Navy and told us how important it was
As a fan of the Die Hard movies I know who Chester A Arthur was 🤣🤣
21st president Chester A Arthur Elementary school.
Did you know he was Collector of Customs right here in New York?
@benkelly2024 🤣🤣 no i didn't know that Jerry
In terms of Jess's question "would your body feel anything?" and saying "time travel" - no; dates, times, watches, clocks, etc are just human constructs to measure time, they're not "real"; we're all going in to the future at a rate of 1 second per second, regardless of how humans choose to measure/name it,
When concorde was still flying you departed London 9AM & arrived in New York at 8AM before the time you left London, it flew that fast🤣
What he will fail to tell you that britain harmonized times before the time he said because of the RAILWAYS! Britain had already started greenwich mean time in 1670 by john flamstead, chester arthur wanted to get other countries to fall into place
But that would mean Greenwich isn't the centre of the world because of a US president, which makes no sense 🤷♂️😄
14:44 The time zones are odd shapes because, as far as possible, you want the boundary to have no people living on it - so you don't get one end/side of your town being an hour different from the other end/side of town.
TO CLARIFY: He incorrectly says that from the EQUATOR to the NORTH POLE, it is divide into 180° degrees - and the same between the Equator to the South Pole... What he should have said was the distance between BOTH Poles is split 180° degrees! From th Equator to the North Pole it is divided by 90° degrees _(and the same fom the Equator to the South Pole)._
Does this mean Britain is NOT the centre then?
@@xsirdavidianx idiot.
@@xsirdavidianx No
Hey, you beat me there !!! 😀👍
@@xsirdavidianx
FIRSTLY: To remember the difference between degrees of latitude and longitude, just think of a LADDER. The latitude lines are the RUNGS and the longitude lines are the "long" SIDES that hold those rungs together. Latitude lines run around the world: East and West.
The 'LONGitude' lines (the ones that go up & down - North and South) are all still there, with the 0 (zero) line still passing through Greenwich, England (called the "Greenwich Meridian"). But the lines of 'latitude' (the ones that go 'round the world' - like rungs on a ladder!), are just measured in different degrees. The equator is the 0 (zero point) and moving away from it (up OR down) is measured thus: 15°, 30°, 45°, 60°, 75° and 90° degrees. Then these are SUB-DIVIDED for different location on the Earth. For example: London is NORTH of the Equator and is located at: Latitude 51.509865 and the longitude is -0.118092 - I hope that helps? 🤔
Anybody whose seen "Die Hard 3, Die Hard With a Vengeance" knows Chester A Arthur was the 24th US President, and was collector of taxes for New York City.
He was the 21st President, in office from 1881 to 1885. He was 20th Vice President, under James Garfield. I'm a Brit, and I knew that.
@@johnm8224 You're right, I miss remembered the clue, it was half of 42 not 48, my apologies.
Hi Mike & Jess, I remember the 1st time I wondered about the International Date Line. It was when the new Supersonic Airliner Concorde was in service. I heard it mentioned possibly (on the Tv program(Tomorrow`s World)), that it was possible to arrive at your destination at a time before you left !! Mind boggling information to me at that time. :)
1. There's a wonderful book "Latitude" that outlines the creation of the Meridian: very much about the creation of an accurate time piece (there's a tie in with "Only Foools and Horses" here) which was so crucial the Royal Navy offered a prize for the sucessful inventor. 2. There were people in Victorian London who set their watches daily at Greenwich, then travelling to the city centre would set the watches of passing Londoners for a small fee: they actually made a living doing it, presumably from the commuters spilling out of the stations so they knew when to catch their trains.
WELCOME TO THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD here in Greenwich, South East London, England, My Universal Friends
I lived my first 29 years just 8 miles into the heart of S E London from Greenwich in Walworth, which, itself, is just 2 miles from Central London with all its tourist attractions.
Then I , moved just 12 Miles out from the heart of London towards the tranquillity of The Suburbs and now I am 4 miles from Greenwich, in the other direction, on the very edge of S E London and Kent. In 6 hours I will walk my 4 dogs in Greenwich Park. LOL
I was born in south-east London with a postcode SE5 (or zip code elsewhere) and still currently live in SE15 and Greenwich is SE10 in parts.
I remember as a kid going to Greenwich Park and they had the 0 degrees latitude line marked out on the ground and so I stood over it with one foot in the east of the world and one in the west. And that is the clean version when using feet.
I'm in Aotearoa New Zealand 20 years this year, yet grew up in the UK. When communicating with parents and other family back there I have to consider that I'm at GMT+12 and often already in the next day. My birthday is now 35 hours long! ( Not 36 hours long as it's in June, which is midwinter here, so Daylight Savings applies! )
the line is actually marked on the ground outside the greenwich royal observatory so you can jump over it one side to the other. its a 20 minute drive from where I live, I really should take the kids as my father once took me when i was small. Its crazy in England, we have so much history on our doorstep but we take it for granted as we pass it every day. I used to pass tower of London and big ben/parliment square every day on my way to work and not think anything of it it was always swarming with chinese and yanks going crazy over it. There is a Pub not far from my house where Charles Dickens used reside upstairs and do his writing, the pub is older than your country by quite some years, still standing and serving beer to this day!
It's also marked inside the observatory, though there's 2 lines, the original and the updated lat/long line
I lived my first 29 years just 8 miles into the heart of S E London from Greenwich in Walworth, which, itself, is just 2 miles from Central London with all its tourist attractions.
Then I , moved just 12 Miles out from the heart of London towards the tranquillity of The Suburbs and now I am 4 miles from Greenwich, in the other direction, on the very edge of S E London and Kent. In 6 hours I will walk my 4 dogs in Greenwich Park. LOL
No, it's 90° North or South to reach the North pole or the South pole. If you go 180° up or down from the equator, you'll just find yourself back on the equator on the opposite side of the world.
Have you ever watched “Around the World in Eighty Days” ? This demonstrated this perfectly. Depending on which way to travel around the world you would either gain or lose a day.
Except you wouldn't
Check out the story of the passenger ship SS Warrimoo that crossed the IDL at the equator on 31st December 1899 and briefly found itself being in two different days in two different months, in two different years, in two different centuries, in two different seasons (Summer and Winter) and all four hemispheres simultaneously.
Having the brain broken by the date line happened to my father. He was a travel agent and was on a world business trip where he crossed the date line back and forth a couple of times. When he got back, his wrist watch and his body clock told him it was Wednesday but it was actually Friday, he had lost 2 whole days. Took him weeks to readjust, talk about jetlag..😊
I have crossed that line on a flight from Fiji to Los Angles. It doesn’t affect your body but it screws up your brain. I arrived in LA many hours before I had left not quite the day before because of the departure time and the length of flight.
This has to be the poorest explanation of the origin of the Greenwich meridian, not least because it does not explain it at all. All the nonsense about railways was almost a century after John Harrison's work. Perhaps it was too complicated for him to explain in his limited way. Typical of the US to claim it was their idea. The Britain fixed the zero longitude for use with its Royal Navy and mercantile marine, and did not require the US to give it to them. However, US military Zulu time is based on Greenwich Mean Time.
The concept of the international date line first boggled me as a kid when I watched the film Around the World in 80 days.
The international date line is where western men can phone and chat to exotic eastern ladies and hopefully get together for cuddles and stuff.
What a great video...didn't know any of this and found it totally fascinating...
Odd USA Centric about trains when main reason was sailing trading around the globe. Standardisation of time was needed for navigation using seextants to measure position using the stars .Royal Observatory at Greenwich 1675 was created for Royal Navy to measure and map the oceans long before trains in USA. In fact before existence of the US. This is how Royal Navy expeditions discovered countries as Australia
Have you ever noticed that Australia always celebrates New Year first . Well this is why 😀🙂
And its not officially a new year for the globe until Big Ben tolls midnight. GMT - Midnight is a new year for the entire planet. Happy New Year!!! 😊
When you're in the navy, you always use GMT aka Zulu time no matter where you are
I live in Spain and we are on the same longitude as Britain but, around 1940, General Franco (who had led a coup d’etat against the left wing Spanish government in 1936) decided to change the country’s time zone to be in line with Nazi Germany. To this day Spain is still GMT +1, which is better for the country as it is in line with most of the rest of Europe and suits business interests. Doesn’t help me when I am watching live football from the UK as evening games sometimes finish after my usual bed time. 😴😴😴
"Britan is Scientifically, Provably the Center of the Globle!........
Granted...We put the line there, but it still counts!"
- Al Murry
Yeah... if ever you fly from say, LA to Sydney (and back) be prepared for date-time shocks! I've done this a couple of times and it makes life interesting... it can be fun to look up airline timetables to see how long you _think_ you'll be in the air (which will probably be a wrong guess). So, for example (LAX to SYD), you'll see things like _Dep: 18 Jan, Arr: 20 Jan_ but you've only been in the air for 15 hours...
You can figure out where the line is and stand on it in Greenwich park if you don't want to or have time to visit the observatory (its not free). Plus, I think on the DLR you pass by a line on a building which marks the Meridian. And if you go to the Maritime Museum which sits below the observatory, catch the Astrophotography of the Year exhibition, well worth it. Rather than climb up the front of the observatory...very steep, best to walk up the road beside it, the final view is I think, the best in London. Coming back into the city, forget the tube, catch an Uber Clipper boat from near the Cutty Sark, all the way in to places like Embankment, fun on a summer day (sit at the outside rear).
I only know Chester A. Arthur was the 21st US president because of Die Hard with a Vengence 😂 also the Diomede islands are either side of the international date line Little Diomede is American (off the coast of Alaska), Big Diomede is Russian, so you could stand on Little Diomede and look at Big Diomede and your actually looking into tomorrow
There was a Conference in Rome first of all that tried to sort out where the Meridian should go. Everyone seemed to agree on a solution, but once they left the Conference the Delegates just 'forgot' the decision made. Your American President, not about to give up, decided to have another Conference.
Most countries attending knew they could not put the Meridian in their country - for all sorts of reasons - but there were others, like the French, who passionately fought for it. The Conference went round and round in circles until a number of countries realised that Britain hadn't even thrown its hat in the ring. Hearing this some countries were very put out and declared this was typically high-handed of the British.
Nevertheless, the Conference argued that the British had been prominent seafarers for a while: most, if not all the floating commerce of the world already used British maps as the Brits had charted the world - at jaw dropping expense. The Brits had also solved the 'impossible' Longitude problem which meant, for the first time, the world's ships could navigate accurately to all places around the globe. So no more just bumping into lands and having to guess where they were! The Time Zones from Greenwich, London, made what this man calls a 'mess' more acceptable as the date line was crossed, as you said, in the middle of a vast ocean. Anyway the upshot of it all was that all countries but one (and two abstentions) voted to continue to adopt the British Meridian at Greenwich. So that is the reason the '0' is where it is. Always enjoy your reactions very much. xxx
If France had got their way we would all be setting our clocks by PMT, and you know how chaotic that could be.
Yes we sure do 😲
LOL
Recommend a film/TV series called Longitude. Two stories, the quest to make a clock that kept accurate time on a ship and a shell socked soldier from WW1 who restored that clock to working order.
'Imagine who is on the 180 line' - welcome to New Zealand. Also there is a major error in the video - the the lines north or south of the equator (latitudes) only go from 0 to 90 north and 0 to 90 south, not 180 both ways.
We should force the digital denizens to always use GMT and proper English. the amount of times I've had to convert American time/date/spelling to the proper British format is taking up all my afternoon tea time.
Yet another informative video well done
At Greenwich observatory there is a metal meridian line embedded in the floor you can step over from one time zone to the other
Train time was arranged using the GWR. So that a train leaving London had the same time in Bristol!
I learned about Chester A. Arthur from Die Hard 3. And the West Wing had a comedic scene where they were trying to assess travel time/day during a flight with the President....they were confused, too.
imagine you do night shifts. youre working when the clocks change over night. your body tells you its time to go home,but the morning shift isnt there for another hour. at the other end, youve got an hour less to get the same amount of work done...
This is a typical example of why the internet can be so frustrating. There are so many inaccuracies in here it's mind boggling - not least of which it is NOT 180 degrees from equator to pole, it's 90 - and so much information has been left out it makes the video worthless - yet most people will watch it, believe it as full fact, and move on. Sheesh.
Being in NZ and on the edge of the map, we don't mind until we get cut off the map completely! Also the reason why the lines are all weird for time zones is due to countries crossing the lines but wanting to maintain one time zone for the entire country. Also the weirdness of the international date line is often that the countries in that region have trade connections that are stronger with countries on one side of the line or the other, so they choose to count themselves on one side or the other to make that relationship easier, which is where you get those weird cut outs occasionally.
If you actually visit Greenwich you can go and see the original zero meridian pillar that was set by the edge of the river Thames. It is really impressive, it is an old rotting timber post.
Daylight saving time becomes more necessary as one approaches either pole, because the length of day changes more as latitude increases. For countries close to the equator, the length of day stays pretty much the same and so daylight saving is unnecessary. Daylight saving is a method that keeps the time zone time in step with local time, which changes all through the year.
I learnt about Chester A. Arthur from 'Die Hard with a Vengeance'.
Hi guys, I'm coming to the USA for the very first time. I live in New Zealand and we fly out of Auckland Airport at 7.25pm and land in New York 10 mins later. That is to say, we fly for 16 hours yet land on the same calendar day at 7.35pm, hence we land only 10 minutes later than we left New Zealand on that same day. The reverse is true when coming back but we actually nearly lose a day that way.
You hit upon the reason why 0 degrees longitude is somewhere near Greenwich. Making sure the international date line in the Pacific was actually in the Pacific was the most important aspect. However, the Paris Meridian is effectively no different in this regard. So the choice between the two did come down to economic / political strength.
In France they cling to the Paris meridian still. It's marked throughout the country with signs marking the "Meridian Vert" (Green Meridian).
When my daughter flew to New Zealand she went via America and consequently she lost a whole day out of her life.
You hit one of the deciding factors missing as much land as possible for the IDL. crossing the line doesnt do anything to time per se it just changed the date and time on your clock. In fact this concept was so important that it was a major plot point in the book and film Around the world in 80 Days.
some of the line widths are to do with going around some countries for convenience and in other places its due the distortion of a flat map showing a round surface (IE a geodesic line)
Daylight saving time isn’t “dumb” it was introduced for war efforts to extend daylight hours so that farms could be cultivated for longer…
Unpopular opinion: The reason I do not like Johnny Harris is because he never really goes deep into a subject, while presenting it as if he did all the research he did on it is all there is to know about it. And often it is very simplified. And because of that it makes people less curious, but it makes him look smarter and will make people listen to him. Basically the content was "Why is it there? There was a committee." Video done. All the rest is more confusing than helpful without the small push that you should look for more info yourself.
It is shown because of the discussion at the end. He made things less clear.
I'm inclined to agree, personally I don't think he's very good. Given the length of his videos the amount of accurate information he gives is surprisingly little, so much so that it may as well be wrong. Calls a video 'why Britain is the centre of the world' and then spends 15 minutes explaining what time zones are with moderate accuracy, with the only real reason given essentially being 'because they're good at sea and maps'.
The way he presented the committee makes it sound like it was America's idea, they agreed on Britain and that was that. So essentially incorrect. With that length of this vid he could have touched on maritime navigation, the chronometer, how Greenwich was established as a 'base' for time decades prior due to the observatory collecting lunar observations vital for navigation at sea by multiple nations, how Britain had already standardised its time nationally for its trains (again, decades before he makes it sound like their president came up with the idea.)
But yeah I agree, kinda irks me how he takes so long to present such basic information and acts like he's done significant research into it.
Look into Ordnance Survey Maps OS Maps and their point of origin regarding sea level and altitude. Also the reason for the "One O'Clock Gun".
I once took a flight from London to New Zealand stopping for 2 hours to re-fuel in LA. When you have a international flight stop over in the USA you get taken (still on airport security side) into a holding room with chairs, a vending machine and a bathroom and an armed guard at the door. But even though you only get to stay under armed guard in a room you still have to go through USA passport control and get your passport stamped. Anyway, I got my passport stamped on 3rd July in LA. Then I took an 18 hour flight to Auckland and I got my passport stamped in NZ as 5th July. So my passport shows me losing a whole day, and ironically after travelling through the USA I lost the 4th July.
As a child I lived near Greenwich in Blackheath. Use to go to Greenwich park - its a wonderful park btw. They have on the ground near the Royal Observatory a line and you can stand astride one foot in the West the other in the East.
4:12 Nope you dont go 180 degrees north, you go 90 degrees north, same wit south.
From a Brit who lives right decisions an in the car SW!
It's so enjoyable watching your journey. PLEASE try to watch JETHRO! A Cornish comedian
😁😁😁
I hate autocorrect
Theres an island joining sweden, norway and finland where you can walk in a circle and be in the 3 countries
I'm totally up for those random close-up shots but only if your use Jess 🙂
People flying from Asia and Australia to the Americas cross the International Date Line. You "ground-hog" a day heading to the US and lose a day flying back. Qantas 11 leaving Sydney at 5.30pm (yes pm) Monday will land in LA at noon on the same day. Qantas 12 from LAX to Sydney will leave at 9.20pm on Tuesday and land in Sydney at 7.20am on Thursday. The actual flight is about 14 hours and all of Wednesday will come and go during the flight
If you were wondering about working over different dates, this was, well loosely, the case in the Diomede Islands that are between Russia and Alaska. Big Diomede is under Russian control and on the eastern side of the date line and Little Diomede is under American control and on the western side of the date line. Prior to WW2, there was a native population that were spread across both islands, and many of these peoples were related and worked with each other on each others islands. However, following WW2 the Soviets kicked everyone off Big Diomede to put in military folk, and and the US population on Little Diomede has been shrinking ever since.
Your casual sarcasm has made this guys dull video viewable … 😂 am all for it.
At about 11 o'clock in the evening of 24th April 2001, I flew out of Nandi, Fiji. It was a long flight. I arrived at my destination, Honolulu, Hawaii, at (I think it was) 7.30am the same day! No, not the next morning, on the morning of THE SAME DAY!
I was born, bred and still reside in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, London. Born in the old Greenwich hospital a stone throws away from the Greenwich Royal Observatory where the cross section of the lines of longitude and latitude + start. Don't mean to blow my own trumpet guys, but am I really the centre of the Earth! I guess it is what it is.🌍 Jess, I think Mike was pulling your leg when he said "do you lose two days if you cross the International Date Line twice. But, that is the Mike that likes to "take the pi*s" and make a joke with an straight face which is typical British sarcasm there Mike. 😂I have one of those battery operated round wall clocks with the long hand, short hand and second hands on the clock. Once batteries are inserted, the hands spin around the clock to self-adjust to the correct time of day and even adjusts itself when the clocks go forward or backward by an hour. What baffles me is, how does this clock know what time to set itself in all of the different time zones around the world? I know this has something to do with radio signals sent to the clock, but it still amazes me.⏲
The lines were set based on local desires. Countries drew the time zones for local convenience due to state lines, rivers, etc..
"Britain was really good at the ocean".
Greenwich is up the road from me and if you go by where the cutty sark is there is actually a metal line in the floor there so you can stand on the date line. It is also where the final battle in Thor 2 takes place, lol.
With the invention of the Chronometer (a very accurate clock) a Chronometer was placed in a sealed box on the first train of the day going west and at each station they set their clocks to the time on the trains Chronometer which meant, among other things, that they could produce an accurate timetable for trains on that route.
Imagine Paris Mean Time.....PMT: 24/7.......I'll get my coat😀
Johnny Harris has some good documentary style videos, airing on conspiracy theory at times but still very interesting.
14:55 Some countries chose to be in different non linear timezones for diplomatic reasons. One in the Pacific chose to be with Hawaii or Australia (can't remember which way round) because it was more economically beneficial for them. And Spain matches central to eastern Europe because a former dictator there was friendly with another dictator terrorising Europe at the time (I'll let you fill the names in)
I watched your video on time zones and you said only America uses daylight saving but the uk also use it since WW1 as many other countries 😊
I heard one of the main reasons was is having Europe in the centre avoids having any major continents cut up. If you look at the back of the earth (opposite to England) on google Earth, it's pretty much just ocean. Do that with any the Americas/Asia, you're cutting into a lot of landmass and would have to draw it all cut up on a map. That's the most obvious reason to me at least
That's how Superman went back in time - flying fast and kept crossing that date line to go back :-)
Realistically you lose a day going across the date line but get it back as go across later. I've flown to NZ a few times and I always remember coming back from NZ once leaving on a Monday morning early hours then flying for 8 hours and arriving in Hawaii on the same day at the start of the day again - we had that day twice. We were getting back the day we lost when we went there which saw us leaving on a Monday and arriving on a Wednesday after a 24 hour journey. It is very weird and part of the reason Jet Lag across such a long distance flight is very strange - your really lose track of time of day and the day itself.
I live in Sussex in the UK and there are places where you can have one foot in the Western Hemisphere and one in the Eastern hemisphere, fun photo opportunity.
I live a couple of miles from Greenwich. The Meridian line is outside of the Observatory so you can have your feet on two sides, & can confirm for Jess that nothing happens to your body. 😉
The timing of the Doolittle Raid's landings in China was partially off because the US Navy was using Dates set from Hawaii & the Chinese Nationalists were using dates set in China. These were on either side of the International Date Line. The result was that the US Army Air Core Bombers arrived a day earlier than the Chinese expected. This was a problem because they often needed to recover from under the noses of some very annoyed Imperial Japanese Army Troops.
I once had one of those puffy jackets. It was wrapped around our old boiler.
The map behind this guy towards the end of the video isn't the typical rectangular map of the world, it made me think of a scene from the TV show "The West Wing." I found this scene on YT uploaded by Useful Clips called "Gall-Peters Projection". It might freak you out a bit but it gets more confusing if you then watch a clip from Geography King called "Map Projections Overview and How They Distort the Earth."
You mentioned about working on one side of the date line and living on the other - we are lucky that the date line runs down the middle of the Pacific so it only affects a few islands given that it's mostly ocean. Imagine how complicated it would be if land is distributed equally around the globe!
Only time I ever crossed the IDL was a flight from Auckland to LA. Very weird in that I left Auckland at 2pm and arrived in LA at 6am the same day! Closest thing to time travel
Daylight savings is also practiced in the UK.so we have GMT and BST or British summer time.