Winnebago County Gets Cancer Screening Contract  |   Home  |   Conservative School Board Member Won’t Seek Reelection

Samoa Cancelling December 30th

I think Wisconsin should switch too.

The tiny South Pacific nation of Samoa will jump forward in time on Thursday as it crosses westward over the international dateline to align itself with its other 21st century trading partners throughout the region.

At the stroke of midnight on Dec. 29, time in Samoa will leap forward to Dec. 31 — New Year’s Eve. For Samoa’s 186,000 citizens, Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, will simply cease to exist.

The time jump back to the future comes 119 years after some U.S. traders persuaded local Samoan authorities to align their islands’ time with nearby U.S.-controlled American Samoa and the U.S. to assist their trading with California.

But the time zone has proved problematic in recent years, putting Samoa nearly a full day behind neighboring Australia and New Zealand, increasingly important trading partners with the island nation.

In a bid to remedy that, the government passed a law in June that will move Samoa west of the international dateline, which separates one calendar day from the next and runs roughly north-to-south through the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Under a government decree, all those scheduled to work on the nonexistent Friday will be given full pay for the missed day of labor.

Posted by Owen at 2100 hrs
Foreign Affairs

Commenting is not available in this channel entry.