By: Cassandra Ingraham; Research: Wikipedia.org

The International Date Line is an imaginary line on the earth's surface, that approximately coincides with the 180th meridian (LONGITUDE), and separates the calendar date. Traveling east across the line, takes the traveler back one day; traveling west, takes the traveler forward one day. Without the date line, confusion would result.

The most troublesome situation usually occurs with short journeys from west to east. For example, to travel from Tonga to Samoa by air takes approximately two hours. Thus, if a person leaves at noon on Tuesday, they will arrive at 2 p.m. on Monday. Meanwhile, someone in Samoa inquiring about the departing flight may be told there is no flight until the next day. There could also be problems with the traveler having to repeat Monday. Journal entries and photographs may end up out of sequence, and there could be errors in a person's medication schedule. In addition, those making connecting flights might choose the wrong date for the reservation
 

Basically the International Date Line runs down the middle of the Pacific Ocean, however because the date to the east of the line is one day earlier than that to the west of the line, the line changes to pass around the far east of Russia and island groups in the Pacific, so that no country is functioning on two different dates. There are two major deviations from the Date Line and both are to keep the date line from causing confusion within a country on "what time is it?"

This imaginary line is to eliminate confusion in the (Travel) world.  Imagine that!

The nautical date line which governs ships is determined by international agreement. It is the result of the 1917 Anglo-French Conference on Time-keeping at Sea, which says that all ships, both military and civilian, adopt hourly standard time zones on the high seas.  Ships must adopt the standard time of a country if they are within its territorial waters, but must revert to international time as soon as they leave a country's territorial waters.

So what is this Nautical Date Line?  It is the Universal Day (midnight-to-midnight under the Greenwich Mean Time  (GMT) a term referring to mean solar time at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Greenwich in London. It is now often used to refer to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)

So with the ships using the Nautical Date Line and the Air Travel Industry using the International Date Line, we have eliminated confusion! The Airline pilots are playing non-touch football and the Captain's of the ships are playing baseball.

Cassandra is the webmaster and travel coordinator for www.Travel360degrees.com a travel site for the cost conscience traveler where you can find International Consolidated Airfares.

 

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