New Year's Journey From New Zealand To America
- By Thetripurapost Web Desk, New York
- Dec 31, 2024
- 283
As soon as the clock strikes 12 on December 31, the celebration of New Year will begin across the world. But do you know, New Year will arrive in New Zealand 7 and a half hours earlier than in India, while in America it will arrive 9 and a half hours later. In this way, the journey of New Year arriving in the whole world will continue for 19 hours.
Not only the time of celebrating the New Year but also the customs are different in the world. In Japan, people together ring the bell 108 times to welcome the New Year, while China will celebrate on January 29.
On New Year, know the science of different times in different countries and 6 strange customs of celebrating New Year...
The British had divided the world's time.
The year changes when the earth completes one revolution around the sun. On the other hand, days and nights occur when the earth completes one revolution on its axis. Due to the continuous rotation of the earth on its axis, somewhere it is morning, somewhere it is afternoon and somewhere it is night. This is the reason why almost every country in the world has been divided into different time zones.
The clock was invented in the 16th century, but until the 18th century it was set according to the position of the sun. The clock was set to 12 only when the sun was overhead.
Initially, there was no problem due to different time of different countries, but later people started reaching from one country to another by train in just a few hours. Due to different time of countries, people had problems in keeping track of train time. For example, if a person left the station at 8 am, then after 5 hours, the time in the country where he reached would be different.
In such a situation, Canadian railway engineer Sir Sanford Fleming first solved this problem. Actually, in 1876, he missed his train due to different timings. Because of this, he got the idea of creating different time zones in different parts of the world.
He talked about dividing the world into 24 time zones. The earth rotates 360 degrees every 24 hours. That is, 15 degrees every hour, which was considered the distance of one time zone. This created 24 equally spaced time zones all over the world.
However, even after creating the time zones, there was a problem as to which point should be considered the centre of the world while dividing the 24 time zones. To decide this, the International Prime Meridian Conference was called in 1884. In this, Greenwich in England was chosen as the Prime Meridian. It was placed at 0 degrees on the map.
At present, the time zone of the whole world is matched with GMT i.e. Greenwich Mean Time. That is, if your country is 60 degrees away from GMT, then 60X4= 240 minutes i.e. there will be a difference of 4 hours in the time zone.
The countries which are to the east of Greenwich Mean Time are ahead of Britain and those which are to the west are behind. For example, India's time is five and a half hours ahead of Britain's time, while America, being to the west of Britain, is 5 hours behind Britain's time.
The countries of the Oceania continent are the farthest east of Britain. New Zealand and Australia are the big countries where the clock will strike 12 first and the New Year will be welcomed. When the New Year begins in New Zealand, it will be 4.30 pm in India on December 31. According to this timezone, China's time is two and a half hours ahead of India, so the New Year will come there first.
Why was Greenwich chosen as GMT? Astronomical events were studied in Greenwich for a long time. That is why Britain made this place the center of the time zone. At that time, Britain used to be the most powerful country in the world. It was also far ahead in trade and had control over most of the world's territory. Most of the ships involved in sea trade used only British time.