What do you think of this fact?
Skipping a day entirely? That’s the dream before an exam. Samoa actually did it in 2011, with the entire country.
The day that never happened
At midnight on December 29, 2011, the clocks in the South Pacific nation of Samoa didn’t move to December 30. They jumped straight to December 31, New Year’s Eve. Friday, December 30, 2011, simply didn’t exist for its roughly 186,000 citizens.
The reason: Samoa switched sides of the International Date Line. Until then, the country had been almost a whole day behind its most important trading partners, Australia and New Zealand. When it was Monday there, it was still Sunday in Samoa. According to The Register, the switch moved Samoa from 23 hours behind Sydney to three hours ahead.
Back to the other side
It was really a return. According to ABC7, US traders had persuaded Samoan authorities 119 years earlier to line up their clocks with neighboring American Samoa. Back then, that made trade with California easier.
By now, though, Samoa was much more closely tied to Australia and New Zealand. Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said, according to The Register, that “over 90 percent of our people emigrate to New Zealand and Australia”. That made the change “absolutely vital”.
Bonus fact: The first switch in 1892 gave Samoa an extra day. According to The Register, the country celebrated the Fourth of July twice in a row.
For people in Samoa, it mainly meant one thing: from then on, weekends, holidays and business hours lined up again with family and trading partners in Australia and New Zealand.
Anyone with a birthday on December 30, 2011, in Samoa had to wait a year. Or just celebrate twice on the 31st.