Who gets to say “Happy New Year” first? (with link to reader responses)

[A link to reader responses is at the end of this posting]

It’s all a matter of longitude.

Or is it?

You have all had to study about latitudes and longitudes.  BORINNNNG!! Right?

Wrong!

Latitudes and longitudes make our lives very interesting. Let us look at how longitudes affect a world-wide holiday – New Year’s Day.

First, a quick revision. Latitudes are imaginary horizontal lines on Earth. Longitudes are vertical. Latitudes and longitudes intersect and form an imaginary grid on Earth. Longitudes meet at the two poles and range from 0° (Greenwich meridian) to 180° (Antimeridian), going east and west. Here are a few views of these imaginary lines using Google Earth.

Image 1: A view of the latitude and longitude grid on Earth.
(Click image for detailed view in a new window)

Image 2: Longitudes converge at the poles. Here you see the
Greenwich meridian (0° longitude) and the Antimeridian (180° longitude)
are opposite to each other.
(Click image for detailed view in a new window)

There are 24 time zones on Earth; each time zone being one hour different from the next one. The “0th” time zone is where a day begins. This could be any old longitude. Actually, by convention, this is 180° longitude (the Antimeridian). Thus, the Antimeridian would also be the International Date Line (IDL)

If you travel east across 180° longitude you should subtract 1 from your date (lose a day), if you travel west across the line, you add 1 to your date (gain a day).

That’s what it should be. But it isn’t. Why?

Well, if we followed that rule, a small part of eastern Russia would have a different date – if the date on west of the line were 1 January 2010, east of the line would be 31 December 2009! Russia would have two different dates! Look at Map 1 below.

Map 1: What happens to countries and their dates when you
use 180° longitude to calculate the date.
(Click image for detailed view in a new window)
Image courtesy: Wikipedia Commons

Here is a Google Earth view of the Antimeridian passing through Russia.

Image 3: The Antimeridian passes through eastern Russia and through the Pacific Ocean.
(Click image for detailed view in a new window)

The Antimeridian passes through the Pacific Ocean where countries are made up of clusters of islands. These countries would have two dates. Problem! (See Map 1 and Image 3 above).

So, individual countries have decided to redraw the IDL away from the Antimeridian.

Whichever country is the first on the west of the IDL, gets to greet the new year first!

A lot of people traveled to small Pacific Ocean islands in December 1999 to be the first ones to greet the year 2000. Which island country was the first?

Kiribati.

In 1995 Kiribati moved the IDL to keep the whole country on the same day at the same time. Before then, the western part of Kiribati (where its capital Tarawa is located) was 22 hours ahead the eastern portion of the country because of the IDL!

Again, look at Map 1 and you will see how Kiribati is affected by the Antimeridian and the redrawn IDL.

Then which place in India will be the first to greet 2010?

Well, going by longitude alone, it should be the place where the borders of Arunachal Pradesh, China, and Myanmar meet. But India has adopted the same time for the whole country, the Indian Standard Time (IST). So, wherever you are in India, you can say Happy New Year at the same moment!

Look up the countries along the IDL in your atlas. Find out which country or place will be the last one that gets to greet 2010.

Share your findings with us using the “Send us a comment” link below, before 4 January 2010.

Be sure to include

• Your full name,
• Email address,
• Nname of your school,
• Your location (City, State), and
• The standard in which you are studying.

We will publish selections on the blog at http://tiigs.org on 5 January 2010.

Here is a version of this blog as it appeared in The Hindu’s Young World supplement on Tuesday, 29 December 2009, on page 3. (Click on the image to open a full-zize image in a new window)

Copyright: The Hindu, 2009

 Readers’ responses to the question in this blog is available here.
We are proud of these geographers!
We look forward to hearing more from them and still others.