Exceptionally, I didn't find out first about this on this list! Below is a quote from a posting to the only other discussion list I subscribe to, CALNDR-L: At 19:43 -0600 1999-01-15, Bill Spencer wrote:
There is a bill to move Daylight Savings Time start from April to March (1st Sunday of either). It was introduced by Rep. Bill McCollum on 1999-01-06, and referred to the House Committee on Commerce. (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d106:h.r.00177:)
I happened upon this when looking through the main House of Representatives web site (http://www.house.gov/).
The bill actually calls it "Daylight Savings Time", when I thought we'd settled on "daylight-saving time" (or the same without the hyphen). At risk of inciting the wrath of some subscribers to the list, I'll dare to comment that this would be a very good northern-hemisphere standard, because (1) it means there are the same number of weeks (34) of daylight-saving time in every year, (2) the times of sunrise at the beginning and end of the period are close over a range of latitudes that covers practically all the population which might be affected (sun rises later in the high 20s north by about the same amount at the beginning than the end as it does earlier at the beginning than the end in the high 50s north), and (3) except in leap years starting on Thursdays, the start date is the Sunday of ISO week 9 and the end date is the Sunday of ISO week 43. (I just won't learn, will I?) --Alex