Slashdot Mirror
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."
Saying "April 1st" feels more natural to English-speaking people than "1st of April" for the same reason that saying "blue car" feels more natural than "car of blue". It's because we put adjectives before nouns, while in e.g. French it's the opposite, and explains why they prefer to say "1er Avril".
Of course it's not an exact analogy, for sure, and it doesn't explain why Germans also use DD/MM/YYYY (although their simply being on the Continent may explain it) but I think this is largely the reason for it.
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.
What the hell? No Health Potions? Talk about a noob...