 โฐ Time is a funny thing! For starters, how are we already nearly in August? But more importantly, when examined closely, time reveals several excellent #geoweirdness examples. In this week's thread, weโll look at some of the weirdest timezone quirks from around the world. To get us started hereโs a map of the world as segmented by the tz database. 1/ 11 comments
3/ Let's get into the #geoweirdness We start with countries where the time zone doesnโt fall on the hour, usually changing with increments of 15 minutes. Examples include Chatham Standard Time (UTC+12:45) and India Standard Time (+05:30). Time in India ๐ฎ๐ณ is worth a thread in itself, though. For example, Bombay Time (+4:51) was used in 1884 (!) and is still used by some Parsi fire temples in Mumbai. 4/ Some countries like China ๐จ๐ณ use a single time zone (UTC+08:00), regardless of geography. This timezone makes sense for Beijing, but not for western territories of the country. This leads to the odd situation that when you cross the border from China to neighbouring Afghanistan ๐ฆ๐ซ you change time by 3 hours and 30 minutes. 6/ Equally odd is the US ๐บ๐ธ state of Indiana. Most counties in the state use Eastern Time, UTC-05:00. Emphasis on the word "most"! 12 of 92 counties, however, observe Central Time, meaning their inhabitants are one hour behind their counterparts. Even more interestingly, these counties are split in opposite corners of the state. 7/ There are some places on Earth where three time zones meet in a single point. The most well known spots are possibly in ๐ฆ๐บ Australia's outback. Readers who enjoy a bit of postcode madness with their time zone oddities (who doesn't) will particularly enjoy Australian postcode "0872" which spans multiple timezones as it covers parts of South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory. 10/ Antarctica sits on every longitudinal line and thus in theory uses every time zone. In practice each research station chooses a timezone to use. 11/ โTimeโs almost up on this thread (sorry ๐). As members of the geosphere will be well aware, geo extends far beyond cartography and mapping. As the saying goes "Everything happens somewhere", but the next question is usually "When?" Which is precisely why we return timezone information as an "annotation" in our geocoding API results 12/ We hope you enjoyed our look at the #geoweirdness of time zones ๐๐ฅ๐ข. Thanks for reading and sharing. What other strange time zone examples did we overlook? We have many more threads about specific countries and regions, border disputes, geocoding, etc over on our blog, enjoy |
Gregory's Server
2/ Before we go full #geoweirdness , a bit of #geoeducation
Time zone information is tracked by the "tz" database, a fascinating, open-source project worth learning about!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database
Most countries have simple time zones, generally based on the sun's position relative to the region's positions on the Earth's surface. However, time zones also involves political and historical factors, and thus they don't always correspond to the longitudinal lines on the globe.