Yes, it’s that time of year again. Say Goodbye to Daylight Savings Time and Hello to Eastern Standard Time on Sunday. It also means that if you have a relative in Arizona, you have to remember that come Sunday they will be two hours behind us, not three.
Daylight Saving Time in the US begins on the second Sunday of March and ends on the first Sunday of November each year. EST begins anew this year at 2am on Sunday Nov 6.
Forty eight states are on board with DST. But Hawaii and most of Arizona are outliers as well as Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands.
When did we first start practicing Daylight Savings Time? The on-again-off-again-on-again history of DST started with the railroads. Before that, each community kept it’s own time.
There’s a popular misconception that our own Ben Franklin created DST. But most people don’t realize that it was Hudson — although not the same Hudson as the river. New Zealand entomologist and astronomer George Vernon Hudson first proposed the idea of a two-hour time shift in an 1895 paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society.
If you are having trouble adjusting to the new time and can’t fall asleep, visit Wikipedia for more information than you would ever need to know about DST history, economic implications and where it is and isn’t implemented.
Photo Credit: “Nyack Sunrise Over the Hudson, 9/10/09, ” Dave Zornow
