Time It Is A Precious Thing Trivia Quiz

Answer: 1pm

France is one hour ahead of GMT. Time is measured from Greenwich Observatory in London, on the zero degree line of longitude (also known as the Prime Meridian). It took an international conference in 1884 to select Greenwich as the singular world meridian, several had previously existed.

The 'Meridian Conference' was called at the behest of the then US President, Chester A. Arthur. Twenty-five nations attended and they voted 22-1 to fix the meridian at Greenwich. San Domingo voted against, Brazil and France abstained.

Answer: False

London and Dublin are in the same time zone. While most people are familiar with Greenwich Mean Time, in scientific circles universal time is known as Co-ordinated Universal Time (UTC). GMT is based on the revolution of the earth, UTC is based on the caesium atomic clock, invented in 1954. In practice the difference is less than the time taken to read this sentence.

Answer: True

Eastern Time, Central Time, Mountain Time and Pacific Time. The US shares its four main continental time zones with Canada. The USA has two other Time Zones, Hawaii Time and Alaska Time.

Canada has six time zones. Indeed, it was a Canadian, Sir Sanford Fleming, who created the Standard Time Zones system adopted world-wide in 1884.

Answer: 10:19pm

In GMT (or UTC) designation, LAX, Los Angeles International airport, is eight hours behind LGW, London Gatwick (seven hours when Daylight Saving Time is observed).

Answer: 15 degrees

The earth's circumference is divided into 24 'lunes' each 15 degrees of longitude between meridians (being 360 degress divided by 24 zones). In practice, some time zones follow political boundaries rather than pure meridians. Each zone is one hour behind its neighbour to the east and one hour ahead of its neighbour to the west.

Answer: China

Russia and Canada are the two largest countries by area. China and the USA are roughly the same size (about 9,600,000 kmē) and dispute the claim to be third-largest country. The (continental) USA has four time zones, Russia has eleven and Canada six. India has two, and Greenland and Brazil each have four.

Answer: It was 4am in Havana

Cuba is five hours (GMT) behind London in GMT Standard. This can change when either is in Daylight Saving Time/British Summer Time. 'Wolfie Smith' was, of course, a character played by Robert Lindsay in the British television comedy 'Citizen Smith' (12th April 1977 to 31st December 1980) "Freedom for Tooting!" was his catchphrase.

Answer: Eastern Standard Time (AEST), Central Standard Time (ACST) and Western Standard Time. (WAST)

Apologies to our Antipodean quizzers for the crude stereotyping in the question. Australia's time zones were adopted in 1892. There are, though, some anomalies, including an unofficial Central Western Time zone, which is 45 minutes ahead of Western Standard Time.

Answer: Arizona

Confusingly, the Navajo Indian Reservation does observe DST. The Navajo Nation uses DST because of its large size and location across three states. DST is also not observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Answer: Zulu Time

The world has 24 time zones and each has been given a letter of the alphabet. The time at Greenwich Observatory, London, is the standard for international communications and has the designation Z, or Zulu.