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0 pointstharkun__1y ago0 comments

Even countries that are on UTC don't save you from this. I had no idea until very recently but there is a time that simply never existed in Iceland!

Wednesday January 2st 1908 00:00 clocks were turned forward 28 minutes to 00:28. So an entire 28 minutes of time never eexisted in Iceland even thought today they are on UTC year round and one might think they are the best and easiest country to handle timezone wise.

https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/1993-November/009236.html

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amiga3861y ago

I should point out that UTC didn't begin until 1960...

The 28 minutes jump is likely Iceland coming into alignment with GMT, for much the same reasons as Ireland did; to improve trade and commerce in a world now using telegraphs, telephones and trains. We're ok becoming disconnected from mean solar time in order to connect more with each other.

Samoa skipped a day in 2011, jumping from UTC−11:00 to UTC+13:00, so that it could align with Australia and New Zealand, its biggest trading partners -- so Australia's Friday is also Samoa's Friday.

We'll always have discontinuities in civil timekeeping, as it's there to serve the whims of humans, not the other way around.

justincormack1y ago

The UK skipped 11 days in 1752. There were riots.

reshlo1y ago

> So an entire 28 minutes of time never eexisted in Iceland even thought today they are on UTC year round

Those two facts aren’t connected. At the time that those 28 minutes were skipped, Iceland was using the equivalent of UTC-01:00.

AdhemarVandamme1y ago

In the same way that an hour is skipped in many places at the beginning of Daylight Saving Time every year (and the offset changes, e.g. from UTC–5 to UTC–4),

on this particular instant, in Iceland, 28 minutes were skipped because Iceland changed from the offset of Reykjavik’s mean solar time, rounded to the nearest minute (UTC–1:28) to the offset of Reykjavik’s mean solar time, rounded to the nearest hour (UTC–1).

So only from that moment on, Iceland was using UTC–1.

reshlo1y ago

That’s a good point, I didn’t think about that.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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amiga3861y ago

I should point out that UTC didn't begin until 1960...

We'll always have discontinuities in civil timekeeping, as it's there to serve the whims of humans, not the other way around.

justincormack1y ago

The UK skipped 11 days in 1752. There were riots.

reshlo1y ago

> So an entire 28 minutes of time never eexisted in Iceland even thought today they are on UTC year round

Those two facts aren’t connected. At the time that those 28 minutes were skipped, Iceland was using the equivalent of UTC-01:00.

AdhemarVandamme1y ago

In the same way that an hour is skipped in many places at the beginning of Daylight Saving Time every year (and the offset changes, e.g. from UTC–5 to UTC–4),

So only from that moment on, Iceland was using UTC–1.

reshlo1y ago

That’s a good point, I didn’t think about that.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse