Garrett Wollman: Many time-zone regions do not have a `capital' of any sort. To give just one example, the time zone `America/Los_Angeles' has three `capitals': Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia. None of these are obvious choices. `America/Chicago' has even more possibilities.
Dunno, the book "The world almanac and book of facts", World Almanac Books, 1998, gives on page 542 a list of US state capitals with Sacramento as the only capital of California, Springfield (not Chicago) as capital of Illinois, etcetera. Good maps will also show the one and only capital of states. For US states with 2 or more timezones, one could use the most populous county seats or courthouses. For instance, Indiana has 92 counties to choose from (ibid, page 424). The same information can be found (elsewhere) for Canada. But I think it's a bit futile to rework the whole tz database only for the sake of being administratively correct. Here and there a couple of obvious corrections won't hurt. But one may have a different opinion. Oscar van Vlijmen 2000-09-28