International Dateline still

Business

International Dateline still puzzles those living around It

THANKS to an obscure conference 114 years ago, every time that travellers cross the Pacific, they lose or gain a day depending on the direction they are going.

It perplexes the people who do it all the time - Samoans, Niueans and Cook Islanders who cross the International Dateline to see friends and family in New Zealand. Stories of two Christmas Days, a missed birthday or a wrecked watch in the

rewinding are commonplace.

Going east across the dateline a traveller goes back a day, while going west across the line leads to skipping a day.

The international Meridian Conference on October 13, 1884, was called by President Chester Arthur for the Diplomatic Hall of the State Department, Washington.

It was attended by 41 delegates from 25

nations. Among them Austria-Hungary

which no longer exists as such; Hawaii,

which was an independent Polynesian king dom until the US invaded and San Domingo which is now the Dominican Republic.

Principles established by the conference included the creation of a single world meridian to replace several that existed then.

That meridian passed through Greenwich, near London, with all longi tudes calculated both east and west from Greenwich up to 180 degrees.

Establishing the prime meridian at Greenwich passed 22-1 with a delegate from San Domingo, for reasons now lost in time, against and France and Brazil abstain ing. France wanted the prime meridian in Paris, not London.

Agreeing to go 180 degrees in each direction from Greenwich passed but with Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Spain against while France, while still in a huff, abstained in the company of

Austria-hungary, Germany, Brazil, San

Domingo and Turkey.

The prime meridian led to the 180

degree longitude becoming the

International Dateline. The conference set an interesting precedent for Kiribati by agreeing to various kinks: around Siberia, avoiding Fiji and between Samoa and Tonga and keeping New Zealand in one

day.

Kiribati, and its predecessor the Gilbert and Ellice Island Colony did not exist then, but its 80,000 Micronesians were left affected by it as the Christian state found itself with two Sundays every week.

In 1995 the government in Tarawa (west of the dateline) declared everybody was in the same day - and consequently Kiritimiti (Christmas) and Caroline islands found themselves 14 hours ahead of Greenwich.

Uninhabited Caroline then became the first place to see each new day and has been renamed Millennium Island.

With Imperial haughtiness that startled Tarawa, the Greenwich Observatory blasted the Micronesians for hijacking the dateline.

A sensitive people, the i-Kiribati (as they are known) were undeterred noted a deci sion made in Washington a century ago which said the line could be moved to accommodate local difficulties. (AFP) ■