From bob@kahala.soest.hawaii.edu Mon Aug 23 17:07:53 1993 Path: nih-csl!darwin.sura.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!ames!news.Hawaii.Edu!kahala!bob From: bob@kahala.soest.hawaii.edu (Bob Cunningham) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.time.ntp Subject: time trivia, Kwajelein skips a day Message-ID: <CC8DD5.7It@news.Hawaii.Edu> Date: 23 Aug 93 21:07:53 GMT Sender: news@news.Hawaii.Edu Organization: School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology Lines: 18 Originator: bob@kahala

Everyone living on the remote Pacific atoll of Kwajelein in the Marshall Islands will have a good excuse for not remembering last Saturdy night. There wasn't one. Residents went to bed on Friday and woke up on Sunday. There was no 21st of August. The government just changed Kwajelein to Marshallese time, effectively jumping the island from one side of the International Date Line to the far side (where it actually is, the IDL being 300 miles to east of Kwaj). The US Army has for the last 40 years been synchronizing the day of the week for its workers on Kwaj with the US mainland.

But most workers didn't lose a day off. The work week was shifted to Tuesday through Saturday, corresponding with Monday through Friday on the mainland.

-- Bob Cunningham bob@soest.hawaii.edu School of Ocean & Earth Science & Technology, University of Hawaii