The International Date Line serves as the “line of demarcation” between two consecutive calendar dates.
The International Date Line, established in 1884, passes through the mid-Pacific Ocean and roughly follows a 180 degrees longitude north-south line on the Earth. It is located halfway round the world from the prime meridian—the zero degrees longitude established in Greenwich, England, in 1852.
The International Date Line functions as a “line of demarcation” separating two consecutive calendar dates. When you cross the date line, you become a time traveler of sorts! Cross to the west and it’s one day later; cross back and you’ve “gone back in time.”
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Despite its name, the International Date Line has no legal international status and countries are free to choose the dates that they observe. While the date line generally runs north to south from pole to pole, it zigzags around political borders such as eastern Russia and Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
The Dateline Is Not Straight
The dateline runs from the North Pole to the South Pole and marks the divide between the Western and Eastern Hemisphere. It is not straight but zigzags to avoid political and country borders and to not cut some countries in half.
What Happens When You Cross the Dateline?
When you cross the International Date Line from west to east, you subtract a day, and if you cross the line from east to west, you add a day.
Depending on which time zone the country follows, the time difference on either side of the line is not always 24 hours. For example, if you travel the 1061 kilometers (659 miles) across the dateline from Baker Island to Tokelau you have to add 25 hours, or 1 day and 1 hour.
Three Dates at the Same Time
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Every day between 10:00 and 11:59 UTC, three different dates on the calendar are in use at the same time on Earth. For example, our Time Zone Converter shows:
- At 10:30 UTC on May 2, it is
- 23:30 (11.30 pm) on May 1 in American Samoa (UTC−11),
- 06:30 (6:30 am) on May 2 in New York (UTC-4), and
- 00:30 (0:30 am) on May 3 in Kiritimati (UTC+14).
Changing Sides of the Dateline
The dateline is not defined by international law. Countries are free to choose the date and time zone that they want to observe.
For example, when the Republic of Kiribati gained independence from being a British colony in 1979 some of the islands were on one side of the dateline, and the rest were on the other. They corrected the anomaly in the eastern half of Kiribati by skipping January 1, 1995 and ever since Kiribati has been the first country to enter the New Year.
In 2011, Samoa changed the time zone from UTC-11 to UTC+13 by shifting the dateline to the west and removing December 30, 2011 from the calendar. They did this to facilitate trade with Australia and New Zealand, and Tokelau followed Samoa for the same reasons.
Drawn up in 1884
The 180° meridian was selected as the International Date Line because it mostly runs through the sparsely populated Central Pacific Ocean. It was decided at the International Meridian Conference in 1884 in Washington, D.C. where 26 countries attended.
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