Waterbury Democrat., 1903-01-03
A CONFUSION OF DATES.
How Alaska and the Philippines Keep Their Calendars with
 the World.

aDOuLS at dIl-On the ear LII $ SuTIdce IS
 the place where the day may be con-
 sidered to beg;n," and where the
 ''date" consequently has to be
 changed?
 A day." of course, is a reality-it is the time occupied by the earth in
 making one rotation on it's axis. But as
 so defined every meridian on the 1 earth's surface has day of it's own. But it would be impossible to regu. late human affairs upon the basis of each meridian having it's own day"
 it is a matter of necessity to reckon. l according to the day of some selected
 station, says the Glasgow Evening
 Times. Formerly each ma tion was wont
 to reckon time from a station of it's own-whence came much confusion, affecting many questions. Nowadays, however, practically the whole world has agreed to take Greenwich as the selected station--to make it the gen. eral first meridian ,'' whence time and geographical longitude are alike reck-
 oned. Welb 180 degrees east and 160 degrees west are identical meridians. It will be seen at once that it entirely depends upon whether you have reached 1t by proceeding eastward or by proceeding westward whether you
 reckon on the day on this meridian
 Saturday or Friday.
 And further, if coming eastward you continued your reckoning after you
 crossed the 18o degrees meridian, you
 would find yourself calling Sunday
 morning that which those who were
 coming toward youfrorn the west were
 calling Saturday morning; while the latter, after they had crossed the 18O
 degrees meridian in the course of the
 continuance of their journey would,
 did they likewise maintain unchanged their mode of reckoning, be calling Friday night that which you had just called Saturday night.
 Thus, then, the Greenwich day. be- i gins at the l8o degrees east meridian. The date therefore, must change there, or otherwise intolerabl confu- 1 sion would result. Compromise, there fore, has as necessary complement to the general agreement adopted the | Greenwich day. the using of the 18o l degrees east meridian as the basis of the s'date line' or line of boundary at l which the date is changed. In travel l ing eastward the date is rectified by doubling the day, i. e., calling two suc-
 cessive days by the same name, while in travelling westward it is rectifed by dropping day out, i.e., passing at
 once, say from Saturday to Monday | in both cases the change being made at the 16o degrees meridian. In actual
 practice the arrangement is not quite | so simple; practical requirements
 necessitate another compromise. Though it mostly traverses ocean, the 1S0 degrees meridian crosses land at few points; and in order to avoid the confusion inevitable with change of i date on land, the actual date line is allowed to deyiate somewhat from the true meridian line at certain points. r The chief deviation is in the Boring straits, the date line being made to run along the center of the waterway, instead of being taken across the Kam- | schatka, a it would do did it follow the actual meridian.
 The date lines recognized by the ad- 1 miralty and by the United States navy are almost the same.
 The meridian crosses an island of i the Fiji group, and in consequence, were it not for convenient deviation. its inha bitants might, if they chose, en- l joy the puzzlement of passing from to- 1 day into tomorrow, and returning
 from tomorrow into yesterday, and
 other experiences suitable to comic
 opera.
 As matter of fact, some queer
 things resulted in Alaska when it was
 Russian territory. For tie Russians,
 having come by way of. Siberia, had, brought their own calendar with them: while the Canadians, who had come westward, had brought theirs. So oh l the frontier line it might be Sunday and church time for the Russians and Saturday and market Gay fer their ne1ghbors. In one town, with mixed population, state of affairs existed involving possibilities thus described:
 A Russian can at any time cross tie borGer and spend yesterday with his friends, or an American can enter Rus sia (where he will find it tomorrow and enjoy the New Years dinner with his Russian neighbors, and return home in ample time to spend the old JEol "1IH HIS IdHilly. AlaSka. or ; course, now uses the Anne rican date. In the Philippines the difficulty also
 made itself felt at one time, inasmuch as, while within the sphere of the
 Asiatic date, they used the American
 one, the Spaniards having first reached
 them from the American side. It thus happened that Luzon and Celebes, though on the same meridian, en- ployed opposite modes of reckoning.
 But in 1s44 the archbishop of Manila
 ended the confusion by suppressing
 the 31st of Decem Der of that year, thus
 adopting the Asiatic dating from 1e45.
 &Babics Never Get Seasfck. ~
 ..Babies never get seasick. I have