The clocks fall back twice this autumn on the two sides of the Atlantic, one week apart. The United Kingdom and every European Union country end summer time on Sunday, October 25, 2026. The United States and most of Canada end daylight saving time on

A meeting invite that says "10:00 IST" looks precise. It isn't. IST is India Standard Time (UTC+05:30), Irish Standard Time (UTC+01:00) and Israel Standard Time (UTC+02:00). In July, the first two are four and a half hours apart. CST can mean Chicago or Shanghai, 14

Mexico uses four time zones, and since October 30, 2022, most of the country keeps the same time all year. Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey stay at UTC−6 in January and in July. Cancún stays at UTC−5, Los Cabos and Mazatlán at UTC−7. The only

The premise behind that headline needs a small correction before the story even starts. Japan did try daylight saving time, for four full years, complete with clocks moving forward and back on a fixed schedule. What Japan never did was choose it. The distinction between

In the United States, the clock change is written into federal law to the hour. Daylight saving time begins "at 2 o'clock antemeridian" on the second Sunday of March and ends at the same hour on the first Sunday of November (15 U.S.C. 260a). In

By the year 1500, the clock at Wells Cathedral in England was already striking the quarter-hours for the whole town to hear. What it could not do was show a minute. There was no minute hand on any clock anywhere, because no clock mechanism was

Nothing about the universe requires a clock's hands to sweep the way they do. There's no physical law dictating that "forward" in time should move to the right at the top of a dial. The direction is a historical accident, frozen into every watch, wall

On October 23, 1998, at a ceremony called the Junior Summit '98, a Swiss watch executive and the then-director of the MIT Media Lab stood together and announced that time zones were unnecessary. The proposal was called Swatch Internet Time. It replaced hours, minutes, and