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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
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!
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!