Dear Commons Community,

Daylight saving time took place at 2 a.m. this morning ( March 9^th).  

With the change, we lost an hour of sleep.

Medical research has shown this shift is associated with a number of health concerns, including an uptick in strokes, heart attacks and traffic accidents in the days following the time change.

When does daylight saving time end in the fall?

Daylight saving time will end on Sunday, Nov. 2.  

Some interesting comments about Daylight Saving Time!

Which countries do daylight saving time outside of the U.S.?

Outside the U.S., most of the countries that observe daylight saving time are in Europe, where it’s common, according to the Pew Research Center. France, Italy, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom and Switzerland are among the countries where it’s practiced.

Daylight saving time is also observed in some parts of Canada and Australia. In Africa, Egypt is the only country to observe it.

Which U.S. states don’t do daylight saving time?

Hawaii and most of the state of Arizona do not observe daylight saving time, according to the Department of Transportation, which oversees time zones in the U.S.

Daylight saving time is also not observed in the U.S. territories of:

American Samoa Guam Northern Mariana Islands Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Who invented daylight saving time?

Some have said Benjamin Franklin started the practice in 1784. He wrote a satirical essay for the Journal de Paris proposing regulations to ensure early risers.

Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute, however, disputes the claim, and looks to New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, who proposed a two-hour clock rollback in 1895. The suggestion was inspired by his passion for collecting bugs, as he wanted more light after work to gather insects.

Still others credit British builder William Willet, who wrote a pamphlet in 1907 that encouraged moving clocks forward in the spring so that people could get out of bed earlier. Lighter and longer days were supposed to save energy, reduce the number of traffic accidents and help people be more active.

In 1916, during World War I, Germany became the first country to practice daylight saving time to conserve fuel, according to the Congressional Research Service. Other European countries soon followed, and the U.S. started practicing daylight saving time in 1918 to add additional daylight hours and help conserve energy.

Today’s practice of starting daylight saving time on the second Sunday in March each year and ending it on the first Sunday in November was enacted under former President George W. Bush.

I like the extra hour of sunlight in the evening!

Tony

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.