Day Light Saving Time

Enjoyed the extra hour of sleep w/"Fall Back". While adjusting the clocks this AM, I was thinking of the weird time zone set up in Indiana state. A few years ago, I used to travel to Illinois, Missouri, and Indiana quite a bit, on work. I used to work on a project in Robinson, Illinois. After work, I used to go Terre Haute, Indiana quite frequently with my colleagues for dinner and for fun as Robinson is not a happening place (Terre Haute isn't either, but it is bigger).

Terre Haute is about 30 minutes drive from Robinson (~45 miles) and follows EST w/o DST at that time*. So, after "Spring forward", time in Robinson and Terre Haute used to be the same. However, on "Fall Back" (i.e., during normal time), Terre Haute used to be an hour ahead. So, we used to leave Terra Haute at ~ 10 PM after dinner during normal time, and reach Robinson at 9:30 PM!

Here are a few more weird things related to day light saving time.

- To keep to their published timetables, trains cannot leave a station before the scheduled time. So, when the clocks fall back one hour in October, all Amtrak trains in the U.S. that are running on time stop at 2:00 a.m. and wait one hour before resuming. Overnight passengers are often surprised to find their train at a dead stop and their travel time an hour longer than expected. At the spring Daylight Saving Time change, trains instantaneously become an hour behind schedule at 2:00 a.m., but they just keep going and do their best to make up the time.

- A man, born just after 12:00 a.m. DST, circumvented the Vietnam War draft by using a daylight saving time loophole. When drafted, he argued that standard time, not DST, was the official time for recording births in his state of Delaware in the year of his birth. Thus, under official standard time he was actually born on the previous day—and that day had a much higher draft lottery number, allowing him to avoid the draft.

- In September 1999, the West Bank was on Daylight Saving Time while Israel had just switched back to standard time. West Bank terrorists prepared time bombs and smuggled them to their Israeli counterparts, who misunderstood the time on the bombs. As the bombs were being planted, they exploded—one hour too early—killing three terrorists instead of the intended victims—two busloads of people.

Click here for more weird stuff. And some good things...

Following the 1973 oil embargo, the U.S. Congress extended Daylight Saving Time to 8 months, rather than the normal six months. During that time, the U.S. Department of Transportation found that observing Daylight Saving Time in March and April saved the equivalent in energy of 10,000 barrels of oil each day - a total of 600,000 barrels in each of those two years.

Likewise, in 1986, Daylight Saving Time moved from the last Sunday in April to the first Sunday in April. No change was made to the ending date of the last Sunday in October. Adding the entire month of April to Daylight Saving Time is estimated to save the U.S. about 300,000 barrels of oil each year.

Beginning in 2007, Daylight Saving Time will commence on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November, thereby saving even more energy

* Now all Indiana follows DST. Still, some counties are in CST while others are in EST.

Correction to the Original Posted: Changed "Terra Haute" to "Terre Haute" as a correction.