The Daily Dose/December 31, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience…
2020: On it!: As we write this, the world is about an hour away from commencing its celebration of the start of the third decade of the 20th century. It starts almost due south of Hawaii with festivities in Samoa and Kiribati, despite the fact both should be east of the International Date Line and amongst the last to leave 2019.
Do You Wonder Why You Don’t Get Invited To More (Any) Parties: The International Date Line is an imaginary line of demarcation more or less at 180 degrees longitude, directly opposite the Prime Meridian (0 degrees longitude). It veers east and west though, to accommodate assorted international borders.
Dry, Technical Matter: Kiribati changed its position vis-a-vis the International Date Line in the 1990s after it acquired territory that caused it to straddle the International Date Line. So, in accordance with international convention, it moved the dateline east so it was completely west of it, placing it in the first group of jurisdictions to make a new year.
FunFact: The International Date Line is so jury-rigged Samoa is in the first group to ring in 2020 while American Samoa, west of the International Date Line and a mere 100 or miles to the east of Samoa, will enter 2020 exactly 24 hours later, the last inhabited place to ring in a new year.
Oh, Jesus H: Both Baker Island and Howland Island, uninhabited US possessions near the equator, are the last places to enter a new year, doing so Wednesday morning at 5am Mountain Standard Time.
More Dry, Technical Matter: Due to bastardizing of the International Date Line, it now takes 26 hours for a planet theoretically divided into 24 time zones to have everyone ring in the new year.
Please Pass The Dry, Technical Matter: 15 minutes after Samoa, New Zealand, including the Chatham Islands, trot into 2020. The South Pole, too. Despite the fact all 24 time zones converge there, they keep New Zealand time at Amundson-Scott Station because access to the South Pole is through New Zealand.
Whew: Exactly why there are time zones 15 and 30 minutes off of standard time is, fortunately, beyond the scope of this column. Happy New Year, and many thanks for reading.
Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow registers the new ride. Today’s Diary.
The lady asked if I wanted to get a personalized plate and I said no…I told her I was tempted to get a submarine veteran’s plate but I didn’t want to pay more for government permission to do something than I had to…Maybe if I could have personalized the submarine plate I would have done it but even then probably not.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life.
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On This Date
In 2004 – The Taipei World Financial Center, now known as Taipei 101, opens in Taiwan. It has 101 floors and at 1,671 feet is the tallest building in the world. Construction had begun in July 1999. It replaced the Petronas Towers in Malaysia as the world’s tallest building and would hold the title until 2010 when it was replaced by the Burj Khalifa (2,717 feet) in Dubai.
In 1988 – Mario Lemieux of the Pittsburgh Penguins becomes the first player in NHL history to score goals five different ways in an 8-6 victory over the New Jersey Devils. Lemieux scored even-strength, power play and shorthanded goals in the first period, scored on a penalty shot in the second period and had an empty-net goal with one second remaining in the game. The feat has not been duplicated.
In 1977 – The Bee Gees are at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the second of three consecutive weeks with How Deep Is Your Love. The song also went to #1 in five other countries, including Brazil and Finland and peaked at #3 in Great Britain. It was Billboard’s sixth-biggest song of 1978 and ranked 25th on its 60th Anniversary Hot 100 last year. It was the first of six consecutive #1 songs for the group, a mark that tied the Beatles for the all-time Hot 100 record, a mark that was later broken, and currently held, by Whitney Houston.
Quotebook
Basic human nature never changed; the collective human text demonstrated that incontrovertibly. – Fred Kaplan, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
The United States wanted the territory acquired in the Gadsden Purchase to build a railroad.
Today’s Stumper
What was the last building in the United States to hold the title of world’s tallest building? – Answer next time!
