Each day starts at the international date line. But countries are free to observe time as they see fit—resulting in a number of calendar quirks.
Each day on Earth lasts approximately 24 hours. But on New Year’s Eve, it takes a little bit longer than that to wrap up the last day of the year and ring in the new one.
That’s because of a quirk of the international date line, the official starting and ending point of each day. The idea of the date line was introduced at a conference in 1884 in which the world sought to create order with the rise of railroads and international travel. The international date line roughly follows the 180th meridian north to south through the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is located halfway around the world from the prime meridian, which crosses Greenwich, England, in the