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125 Years of Longitude 0 0' 00" At Greenwich
An anonymous reader writes "This week marks the 125th anniversary of the International Meridian Conference, which determined that the prime meridian (i.e., longitude 0 0' 00") would travel through Greenwich, UK. One of the reasons that Greenwich was agreed upon 'was that 72% of the world's shipping already depended on sea charts that used Greenwich as the Prime Meridian.' Sandford Fleming's proposal of a single 24-hour clock for the entire world, located at the center of the Earth and not linked to any surface meridian, was rejected / not voted on, as it was felt to be outside the purview of the conference."
We're currently 5-10 hours behind, not too far, but we don't seem to be gaining.
Play Command HQ online
Don't even get me started on our lack of metric....
But you have a beautiful metric, in bodyparts!
It's perfect for D&D. "I advance five feet" is much more immersive than "I advance two meters".
Pity that you didn't make a corresponding time system replacing seconds, hours and days by heartbeats, digestions and bodyrottings.
uhm alot of people think in languages other than US English
No wonder yo make so many mistakes and think so wrongly
Continental drift will help you out eventually.
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
Do you have any idea what that would do to the March Pi Day?
I always have to stop and think for a second when trying to remember how long "five feet" is,
What's to remember? Five feet is the reach of your longsword.
And I don't care where you live, you should always carry a longsword.
And 30 feet of rope.
I recently flew from LA to Fiji. On the way forward, you land two days after departure, on the way back, you land at the same time you departed...
It's pretty disturbing.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Your vagina sounds sandy.
Anybody wondering why it's doesn't run through Paris? Take a look here
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Aaron: Man, I'm starving. I haven't eaten since later this afternoon.
I used to leave near New Orleans.
My bet is "this guy's house in Belleville, IL"
The distance between the US and Greenwich is increasing, so continental drift will only make it worse.
I hear congress is going to pass a law to correct this...
Well, of course! It just doesn't sound the same when one says "I wouldn't touch that with a 3-meter pole."
You mean: "I wouldn't touch that with a 3-meter american".
Also, the written form Americans use causes a lot of confusion when dealing with non-Americans who use yyyy-mm-dd, dd/mm/yyyy or yyyy/mm/dd.
Why the hell do you think we do it?
You know we work REALLY REALLY hard to piss you guys off.. I mean we even elected a NICE president this time around just so we could fuck with you and elect Hitler next time... And yes I do mean "The Hitler". He flew out on that last plane that took off from the street right outside the bunker right before the Ruskies took it. We picked him up a few days later trying to enter Sweden. Apparently he had a bunch of gold in some bank there or something, who knows... Anyway we've had to replace most of his body over the years with alien implants we got from the Roswell crash but still you guys are just going to FREAK!
Hummmm, I wonder what you will think when we start a third war on terror, involving our own terror campaign... We like to call it... Where on earth did those Yankees hide that Hydrogen Bomb!
No, he's talking about length, not girth.
No, I'm not going to do your homework for you again. Stop asking.