Beginning of winter time. Can’t see much hope for world peace if the countries (or parts of same, remembering Saskatchewan) can’t agree on a date for beginning and ending daylight saving time. Should be pleased not to have the problem of the Chinese, with the whole country on Beijing time. Though in fairness ninety percent of the population lives along the east coast. Türkiye is also one time zone, though it’s a smaller country than China, and does not switch to summer time.
This had left North Cyprus with a problem when Türkiye decided to scrap the daylight saving time shift in 2016. Initially the TRNC went with Turkish time year round. However that meant that it was out of sync with the Republic of Cyprus in the South and also meant that a high proportion of the population was unhappy with the arrangement. So in 2017 TRNC went back to Eastern European time, known as UTC +2, in sync with the South - and actually Lebanon, Israel and Gaza. While Istanbul, an hour’s flight to the west of us (well, to be accurate it’s more north than west) is on UTC +3. In other words if it’s 9 pm here it’s 10 pm in Istanbul. A question of politics as well as longitude.
And if air schedules are confusing now, it’s nothing to the difficulties encountered by railways in the days before time zones. Time zones were only agreed upon in 1884, thanks largely to a proposal of Canadian Sir Sanford Fleming. Before that communities established their own times. So despite the anomalies things are simpler.
And daylight saving time? Canada trialled DST in 1908, making Thunder Bay (then still Port Arthur and Fort William) the first documented case of Daylight Saving Time in the world.
A little unsettling to find the sun gone by four pm today, but that is in large part the result of living on the north side of a mountain range. The official sunset time for Lapta was 16:57.
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