International date line Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The International Date Line is an imaginary line on the surface of the Earth. Its purpose is to offset the hours that are added as one travels East through each successive time zone. It is for the most part at ±180° Longitude, on the side of the Earth that lies opposite the Prime Meridian, but has an odd shape to pass around Russia and islands in the Pacific.The first phenomenon to occur in association with the date-line problem was part of Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe. The crew returned to a Spanish stopover sure of the day of the week, as attested by various carefully maintained sailing logs. Nevertheless, those on land insisted the day was different. Although readily understandable, this phenomenon caused great excitement at the time, to the extent that a special delegation was sent to the Pope to explain this oddity to him.
For the most part, the International Date Line follows the longitude line of 180 degrees. The two largest deviations from this meridian both occur to keep nations from crossing the date line internally. In the North Pacific, the date line swings to the East through the Bering Strait and then West past the Aleutian Islands in order to keep both Alaska (part of the United States) and Russia both completely on opposite sides of the line. In the central Pacific, the date line was moved in 1995 to extend around, rather than through, the territory of Kiribati. Prior to this time zone change, Kiribati straddled the date line; as a consequence, government offices on opposite sides of the line could only communicate on the four days of the week when both sides experienced weekdays simultaneously. A secondary consequence of this time zone revision was the new status of Caroline Atoll as the Easternmost inhabited land to enter the year 2000, a feature which the Kiribati government capitalized upon as a tourist draw.
The effect of ignoring the date line is also seen in Jules Verne's work of fiction Around the World in Eighty Days, in which the travellers return to London after a trip around the world, thinking that they have lost the bet that is the central premise of the story. Having circumnavigated in the direction opposite Magellan's, they believe the date there to be one day later than what it truly is.
Anyone travelling West and passing the line must add a day to what they would otherwise expect the date and time to be. Correspondingly, those going East must subtract a day. Magellan's crew and Verne's travellers neglected those adjustments, respectively.
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