About 50 miles to the east, it was noon three minutes ago. And that was the situation, until relatively recently. In the 19th Century, railroads brought about time zones. To run trains on time, people needed to agree on what time it was. This is much easier if most of the local towns have exactly the same time.
Distant towns have a different time.
Otherwise, the whole earth would have the same time. And then some places would have noon in the middle of the night. So the world was divided into 24 time zones. Each zone is one hour different from those adjacent to it. On the oceans, the borders between zones run mostly north and south.