Day Light Savings Coming March 13th
Love when we spring forward as we turn clocks ahead and lose an hour. The extra sunlight feels so much better when 6 p.m. EST comes. Mark your calendars to dance in the streets in celebration of the extra sunlight on March 13th. On March 9, 1918, Congress enacted its first daylight saving law. Although DST was used in Canada in 1908, Germany and Austria were the first countries to use DST in 1916, it is a little-known fact that a few hundred Canadians beat the German Empire by eight years. On July 1, 1908, the residents of Port Arthur, Ontario, today’s Thunder Bay, turned their clocks forward by one hour to start the world’s first DST period.
If you like Daylight Saving Time you can thank New Zealand scientist George Vernon Hudson and British builder William Willett. In 1895, Hudson presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society, proposing a 2-hour shift forward in October and a 2-hour shift back in March. There was interest in the idea, but it was never followed through. In 1905, independently from Hudson, British builder William Willett suggested setting the clocks ahead 20 minutes on each of the four Sundays in April, and switching them back by the same amount on each of the four Sundays in September, a total of eight-time switches per year.
