On Sunday morning, at 03:00, we will move the clock to 02:00 and thus switch to winter time again. But to make the transition a little more fun this year, we have prepared 6 interesting things related to the change of clock.
Are you ready to moving the clock to winter time would you rather know that this would not happen again? Well, history can also provide us with very interesting facts about summer and winter time, as well as some morbid ones. Thus, 20 years ago, three people died in the West Bank in Israel, precisely because of the change of clocks to winter time.
The sun and politics
Winter time is the natural one according to the Sun. Daylight saving time was introduced by law, i.e. by decree, and in general it is a matter of the individual country or, in our case, of the European Union. We Slovenians started using daylight saving time on March 27, 1983, based on the Time Calculation Act, which was adopted by the Assembly of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia almost half a year before.
History
It is sometimes claimed that DST suggested Benjamin Franklin in a letter to the editors of the Paris Daily. Anyway, the article was snarky, and Franklin wasn't suggesting Daylight Savings Time, but rather that people should get up earlier and go to bed earlier. The first to really propose the switch to summer time was an English builder William Willet. The first country to listen to him and start moving the clock was Canada (1908). It was the first in Europe Germany (1916), followed by France, Great Britain and Austria. During the Second World War, Adolf Hitler also used daylight saving time, so even today many people call the movement of the clock hands "Hitler's Hour". Although summer time was abolished after the Second World War, it was reintroduced due to the energy crisis in the 1960s and 1970s.
Some countries do not move clocks
Iceland, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Russia, China, India, South America and the Republic of South Africa never move the clock, but are always in winter time.
Playing with time
Nine years ago, Russia decided to stay on summer time forever. But this decision did not last long, as they quickly changed their minds. Already in 2014, the Duma voted to use it only winter time.
Controversial health implications
Whenever the clock moves forward or backward, some people complain that they don't feel well. They are tired, they fall out of their biological rhythm, their mood changes. Although medicine does not pay much attention to this, some studies have shown that the organism needs up to 15 days to get used to the changes. According to doctors, moving the clock has a negligible effect on the body compared to working multiple shifts and changing time zones.
Deadly movement of the clock
The West Bank* was still on daylight saving time in September 1999, but Israel moved its clocks to winter time. Terrorists from the West Bank prepared time bombs and smuggled them into Israel. However, because they were not aware of the change in time or were completely confused by it, they the bombs exploded one hour ahead of schedule. Three terrorists who planned to kill 2,000 people died.
*territory located between the right bank of the Jordan River and the 1949 Israel-Jordan demarcation line, bordering the Dead Sea to the southeast
