The Clock Strikes Back

A DST reminder (and some history)

Author

Dan Lewis
November 01, 2024

Happy Friday! If you're new to Now I Know, you'll notice that today's format differs from the rest of the week. On Fridays, I pause to write the "Weekender," my  "week in review" type of thing, or to share something else I think you may find interesting. Thanks for reading! — Dan

The Clock Strikes Back

Hi!

This weekend, the vast majority of the United States does something kind of strange: we all, collectively, decide to turn our clocks back an hour in the middle of the night. Daylight Saving Time is ending, and we’re reverting to Standard Time. As a result, the mornings will be a little bit brighter, but sunset will occur way, way, too early for most. (Sunset in New York City on Monday is 4:48 pm.)

So first, a PSA: Don’t forget to adjust your clocks before you go to bed on Saturday night! Many of our clocks now self-adjust — the ones in your phone, computer, and cable box typically do, and increasingly, so does the one in your car. Microwaves and other appliances, no so much, but the good news is that those aren’t typically the ones controlling the alarms that wake us up. But just in case, check your clocks.

And because this is a trivia newsletter, here’s some DST-related trivia.

There’s a good chance on Monday that you’ll have a conversation (or see one online) where someone bemoans the time change and asks: why don’t we just do DST year-round? In the U.S. at least, that was actually tried — and it was a disaster. (I think I’ve written about this before, but I couldn’t find the article, so I’m sharing this in the Weekender. In case you were wondering why this wasn’t a regular Monday-to-Thursday Now I Know, that’s why.) Here’s how Time Magazine summarized the history and issue:

In December 1973, amid an energy crisis, President Nixon signed into law a bill for year-round Daylight Saving Time as one way to reduce the nation’s energy consumption. TIME reported back then that the hope was that “setting clocks ahead one hour could reduce nighttime electrical use and shave about 2% off the nation’s demand for energy.”

[ . . . ]

But the shift raised concerns soon as it took effect on Jan. 6, 1974. One was the safety of children walking to school in the morning, after eight children in Florida were involved in predawn car accidents in the wake of the time change, leading a TV commentator to coin the phrase “Daylight Disaster Time.” Reader letters to TIME provide a glimpse at the general opposition to the change. “Little children walking to school in the dark? No, mothers are driving them. This is saving energy?” Lynn Ward of St. Joseph, Mich., wrote. “No matter how Congress legislates, there are only a limited number of hours of daylight. We on the western edge of a time zone are using more electricity to cope with the extra hour of morning darkness than we did with the hour of evening darkness.” Perhaps referring to Watergate, the other crisis taking up Nixon’s energy at the time, Marianna Byg of Columbus, Ohio, joked, “the Nixon Administration has not seen the light for so long that it thinks it fitting for the rest of the population to be in the dark at least part of the time.”

The experiment was supposed to last for two years, but it only lasted eight months, and Congress reverted to standard time in the fall of 1974.

Yep, it all comes down to the kids — it’s not worth saving a bit of energy if they can’t get to school safely.

If you want more DST-related trivia, you’re in the right place. In trying to find my write-up of the 1974 experiment, I found a lot of other stories I’ve shared — here you go!

  • Pumpkin Saving Time: DST ends right after Halloween, and that’s not a coincidence.

  • Time to Go To Jail: When adjusting your clock for DST was illegal.

  • The bonus fact on this one is about how Minneapolis and St. Paul couldn’t agree on when to change their clocks, leading to a mismatch in the Twin Cities.

The Now I Know Week In Review

Monday: Some Very Expensive Air: I would have titled the sculpture “Ceci n'est pas une pipe”

Tuesday: The Batman of Baltimore: He’s not really Batman, but he was definitely a hero.

Wednesday: Unwrapping a Halloween Mystery: Mystery Dum-Dums… what flavor are they? It depends.

Thursday: Nightmare on Sesame Street?: The Wicked Witch is scary!

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And thanks! — Dan

Long Reads and Other Things

Here are a few things you may want to check out over the weekend:

1) “Test Your Candy I.Q.” (New York Times/gift link, 8 minutes, October 2023). Yes, I know Halloween was yesterday, but this was still fun (and harder than I thought).

2) “The Toxic Wave That Swallowed a Tennessee Town” (Oxford American, October 2024). The subhead: “The night of the 2008 coal ash disaster in Kingston, Tennessee.”

3) “This photo of the National Mall captured the country in a decade. The real story behind it remained a mystery—until now.” (Washington Post/gift link, 11 minutes, September 2024). This is a wonderful story and I’m going to say nothing else because I can’t do it justice.

Have a great weekend!

Dan