A New Day Trivia Quiz

Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand, and the first of these places to greet the new day. It is only a short way west of the International Date Line (see the information in question 5) and is twelve hours ahead of the time in London. Another place with the same time is Suva in Fiji.

A day is twenty four hours long, and noon, or 12.00 is when the sun is at the highest point in the sky. So midnight, or the start of the day, is twelve hours before that.

Perth is the largest city, and the capital, of Western Australia. It sees the day start four hours later than it does in Auckland, as does Hong Kong, and also Bandar Seri Bagawan in Brunei.

Because the earth spins on its axis, different places in the world have the sun at the highest point at different times. It is more convenient for everybody to be awake during daylight hours, and to be asleep when it's dark, so there are different time zones in different parts of the world.

Kolkata, once known as Calcutta, is on the east coast of India. The people there see the beginning of the day two and a half hours after those in Perth, while those in Male, in the Maldives, will wait another half hour .

360 imaginary lines are drawn from the north pole to the south pole dividing the world into different sectors, or degrees. They are called lines of longitude, or meridians.

Dar Es Salaam is on the East coast of Africa; it was once the capital of Tanzania, and it is still the largest city. It is another two and half hours before the day begins here, when it will also start in Moscow.

The meridians are numbered from 0°, which runs through western Europe and west Africa to 180°, which runs through the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The lines which run through eastern Europe, Asia and Australasia are called 1° to 179° East, and the lines which run towards the Americas are called 1° to 179° West.

Frankfurt is one of the largest cities in Germany; it lies in the middle of the country. The day starts here two hours later than it does in Tanzania. Abuja in Nigeria and Oslo in Norway also start their new days then.

An imaginary line wiggles around the 180° meridian - it is called the International Date Line, and it is used to determine the start of a new day.

Greenwich is part of London - the capital city of both England and the United Kingdom. The people there will see the day start an hour later than those in Germany. Timbuktu in Mali shares the same time zone.

The Royal Observatory at Greenwich in London was chosen to be 0°. All world time zones are specified in relation to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), which is also called UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). Perhaps it should be known as Timbuktu Time!

Rio de Janeiro is one of the largest cities in Brazil. The sun rises three hours later there than it does in London. Nuuk, in Greenland, has the same time zone.

Originally everybody used the sun to determine the time, but when faster transport methods, such as railways, were invented, this presented problems. A train could leave a big city at 1.00 p.m. and travel west for an hour. All the passengers would think it was now 2.00 p.m. But the local people at their destination, using the sun time, might say that it was only 1.55 p.m. Another train might have left the station at the same time for a place in the east, and the people there would say that it was already 2.05 p.m. This led to the introduction of a standard time for a country, if it was a small one, or, possibly, part of a larger country. In the United Kingdom people would refer to the local sun time as 'God's time', and the official time, as introduced by the government, as 'railway time'.

Cusco lies in the Andes; it was formerly the capital of the Incan empire. The day there begins two hours later than it does in Rio de Janeiro. It is also when the day begins in Cuba, New York and Quebec.

Standard time zones became even more important when air transport became available. Early aeroplanes were quite slow by twenty-first century standards. They also had to stop and re-fuel quite frequently. In 1930 it took nineteen days for Amy Johnson to fly from London to Australia. By 1950 the same route took four days. By the end of the twentieth century, jet aircraft had reduced the journey time to less than twenty-four hours.

Vancouver is the largest city in British Columbia on the west coast of Canada. The day begins there three hours after it does in Cusco. It is that much later in the Pitcairn Islands and Hollywood, too.

With 360° around the world and 24 hours in the day it is time for a different hour every 15°. Most countries have time zones that differ from others by whole hours, but some places, such as India, use an extra half-hour difference to align with the sun time. A very few places have an extra fifteen minutes on their time zone. One of these is the Chatham Islands, where the day starts 45 minutes earlier than it does in New Zealand.

Honolulu is the capital of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. Hawaii is one of the two westernmost states of America and the people start their day an hour later than those in Vancouver, as do those in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. The day starts at the same time in both the Pitcairn Islands and Kiribati.

However, that International Date Line isn't straight. It wiggles to the east of Kiribati meaning that when Sunday starts in Hawaii and the Pitcairn Islands it is Monday beginning in Kiribati!