September 23 - Autumn Begins with the Equinox in Eastern Asia

                           Posted on September 23, 2021

This post is an updated version of my post published on September 23, 2010:

Equinox means “equal night,” and this is the date when day and night are equal lengths. (Depending on where you live, the day and night aren't quite equal.) In the Northern Hemisphere, fall begins on the September Equinox, and in the Southern Hemisphere, spring begins on that day.

This year the Equinox occurs at 19:21 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) - on September 22! (That translates to 7:21 p.m. UTC.) Coordinated Universal Time is a time standard that can be referred to worldwide. It is based on International Atomic Time and is roughly the same time as Greenwich Mean Time, which is the time kept at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, England.

Notice: today is September 23. And I just said that this year the September Equinox is September 22. What - what - what?

Well, any part of the world that has a time zone far enough ahead of UTC will have its Equinox early in the morning on the 23rd instead of in the afternoon or evening of the 22nd. So we say that the September Equinox occurs a day later in such locations as Eastern Russia, Japan, Korea, etc.

Fall falls...

Again speaking from the perspective of the Northern Hemisphere, the days have been getting shorter, and the nights longer, ever since the first day of summer. The days will continue to get shorter and shorter until mid-December. Today is the mid-point in the process.

The shorter days are the main reason that winter is colder than summer. This seasonal change is caused by the Earth's tilt.

Balance an egg on its end...

 

...or not...

Even though it has been disproved over and over (and over!), there persists a myth that you can balance an egg on its end only during an equinox, when everything is balanced and equal.

Some people might say that it's impossible to balance an egg - but it's not. It's really hard to do it—it takes a lot of practice—and it takes a lot of patience—AND you have to have the right egg, one that has a yolk centered in its shell—but you most definitely can balance an egg on its end.

However, with the right egg, with all that practice and patience, you can stand an egg on its end any day of the year! The idea that it is only possible on an equinox is pure myth! 

Also on this date:

Grito de Lares

National Day in Saudi Arabia

Anniversary of Lewis and Clark's return from the Corps of Discovery

Physicist Fizeau's birthday

 Patterson-Greenfield's First Automobile

Anniversary of the predicted end of the world (spoiler alert - it didn't happen!)

Anniversary of the discovery of Neptune

Birthday of activist / educator / journalist / speaker Mary Church Terrell

National Great American Pot Pie Day

National Snack Stick Day

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• September holidays
• September birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in September
  
  

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• October holidays
• October birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in October

November 18 – Time Zone Day

Posted on November 18, 2015

Arranging a time system by the position of the sun makes a whole lot of sense. The sun rises in the morning, is overhead at noon, and sets in the evening. Whatever your time system is, you get used to those morning-noon-evening times (for example, sunrises around 7:00 a.m., noon at 12:00 p.m., and sunsets around 7:00 p.m.).

But of course, in the modern world we often talk to, listen to, or even play games with people who live far away—even halfway around the world! The further away from home, the more radically different the position of the sun—and when you are talking about halfway around the world, we are talking about day here being night there, and vice versa.

Our communications have gone pretty much instant and global. But our transportation is pretty quick, in the modern world, as well. We often drive and fly long distances—and we can then see firsthand the local-time-by-sun being different in different places. If you time it just right, you can take off in a plane at 7:00 a.m. and fly a long distance and then land at 7:00 a.m. on the same day! One time my family chased a sunset—it seemed to linger above the horizon for a long time as we streaked westward.

When the world was just starting the communication and transportation revolution, in the second half of the 1800s, with the advent of telegraphs and telephones and continent-straddling railroads, people for the first time began to run into problems dealing with all the different local times people were living by.

According to Time and Date, every city in the U.S. used a different time standard. Along the route of the various railroad tracks, there were more than 300 different sun times to choose from as they announced their schedules of arrivals and departures.

That made the railroad schedule pretty tricky!

Railroad managers established time zones, lumping together nearby sun times. But what they set up were 100 railroad time zones! Still a bit of a handful!

Finally, on this date in 1883, railroad managers decided to make a much more streamlined schedule: just four standard time zones for the continental United States and Canada.

Britain had already adopted a standard time system for all of England, Scotland, and Wales, and people of both Britain and the U.S. urged the rest of the world to adopt time zones. Perhaps surprisingly, it only took a year to obtain an international standard time system.

Check out this zoomable world time zones map. Note that there are some “and-a-half” time zones, and there are a lot of wavery-quavery bits in the lines between time zones.  There are also some time zones that have very little land mass in the zones!

Also on this date:

Pushkar Camel Fair 11/18 to 11/25, 2015

Photography pioneer Louis Daguerre's birthday  

Push-Button Phone Day

Beni Festival in Trinidad, Bolivia

Anniversary of William Tell shooting an apple off his son's head

Mickey Mouse's birthday

(or Mickey Mouse Day)

Flag Day in Uzbekistan

Independence Day in Morocco

National Day in Latvia and Oman

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• November holidays
• November birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in November

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• December holidays
• December birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in December

July 14, 2012 - Unaine (Elderly Woman) Day on Kiribati

The island nation of Kiribati is the first to greet a new day, because it is positioned just east of the International Date Line. So by the time we are discussing Saturday's Kiribati holiday, let's say at noontime in the U.S., it is already Sunday morning on Kiribati!

So we are already out of date. Sigh. It's a big world, with 39 time zones.

(I would have thought that there would be 24 time zones, with 24 hours in the day, but some nations have adopted offsets from Greenwich Time that are not even-hour offsets. For example, I live in the time zone called Pacific Standard Time, which is 8 hours behind Greenwich Time, which is an even-hour offset. India and Nepal have chosen not to have even-hour offsets; India is 5 hours and 30 minutes ahead of Greenwich Time, and Nepal is 5 hours and 45 minutes ahead.)

Kiribati is a small nation, as many island nations are. The 33 islands combine to be quite a bit smaller than the city of San Diego, California (a city near me). Yet, despite the nation's small size, it spreads out over three time zones! It's incredible that the much larger nation of India has chosen to have only one time zone. In comparison, the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii, spreads out over six time zones!

Hey, you know what?

Remember, at the beginning of this piece, I was complaining that my info on today's holiday is coming to you when it is already yesterday on Kiribati? Well, guess what? Today on Kiribati (which is tomorrow where I live in California) is Uniwaine (Elderly Man) Day.

Confused? Me too!

Also on this date:

Bastille Day in France 

Emmeline Pankhurst Day 

January 23, 2012 - Chinese New Year

 It's the Year of the Dragon!

In China's time zone, it is New Year's Day on January 23, 2012. With the Chinese lunar calendar, the New Year comes on a different day each year, and it often comes in early February. This year it arrives a little earlier!

Many people know that each year is assigned an animal name, cycling between twelve animals as varied as rats, tigers, monkeys, and pigs. This year is surely the coolest animal—so cool it doesn't actually exist!—the dragon. But did you know that there are also element names associated with each year? The elements are metal, water, wood, fire and earth. This year the element is water, so this is the year of the Water Dragon.

Here are some questions I had after reading about Chinese New Year:

1. What does it mean to say “China's time zone”? China's a large country, about as large as the U.S. Wouldn't it have more than one time zone, like the U.S. (which has four time zones)?
2. Does China still use its lunar calendar for everything? Including business?

I googled these questions, and this is what I found out:

1. China used to have five time zones. Since the end of World War II, and the beginning of Communist China, all the various time zones use the same time, so it is as if the whole country shares one time zone. That means that some residents have times that roughly correspond to the sun in the sky, with the sun almost overhead around noon, but other residents do not—some might have the sun overhead much earlier or later than noon.
2. China has used the Gregorian calendar that the rest of the world uses since 1929, although in the Chinese system the months are numbered rather than being translations of the familiar names (January, February, and so forth). The traditional lunar calendar is still used for festivals and holidays, and in astrology.

Celebrate Chinese New Year!

Here and here are links to Chinese New Year coloring pages, activities, and recipes. 

For more on Chinese New Year...check out this earlier post. 

Also on this date:

Anniversary of the partitioning of Poland 

Anniversary of the coldest temperature in the U.S.