One of the biggest problems with Daylight Saving Time is that most people forget it, even though there are reminders on television and other mediums. If you are going to ask when does the clock change, perhaps you should address other questions like: Why do we even have Daylight Saving Time? Who first conceived Daylight Saving time? Does Daylight saving time affect anything but sleep?
According to the Independent, Daylight saving time will officially begin at 2 AM on Sunday, March 8th. Like most people, it is just easier to set the clock forward just before you go to sleep. Fortunately, most clocks on our cellular phones just do this automatically.
Even though most of America knows about this, there are some places that do not practice Daylight saving time. For example, if you live in Hawaii, you don't have to do this. The same rule applies in most of Arizona, Midway Atoll, and Wake Island, a small region of Alaska, according to Time and Date dot com.
In case you are wondering why Hawaii and other countries do not observe Daylight saving time, it is all about location. Web Exibits states that countries near the equator have day and night that are approximately the same length. However, if you live closer to the North or South Pole, there is a longer period of daylight in the summer. Therefore it isn't helpful to have Daylight savings time if you live near the equator, but there are some regions within the Daylight savings time area that just don't observe it, such as most of Arizona.
So who in the world first had the idea of Daylight saving time? Most will attribute it to Benjamin Franklin, who conceived it when he was an American delegate in Paris. He wrote an essay entitled "An Economical Project", and some of Franklin's friends, who invented some new form of oil lamp loved the idea and it grew from there, but it took a while before it became official.
According to Answers, the first country to first institute Daylight saving time was Germany, on April 30, 1916, during the first world war. In spite of the United States being at war with Germany, they first observed Daylight saving time on May 21, 1916. I can't help but wonder if the loss of an hour of sleep affected the ward, and you have probably noticed that these dates are pretty late considering Daylight saving time is now in early March.
Still, most of us like getting those extra hours of daylight during Spring and Summer, even if we have to sacrifice one hour worth of sleep on one night out of the year. This is how Daylight saving time affects most of us, but the Independent says that it is more than that. Apparently, a study performed by Dr. Amneet Sandhu, a cardiology fellow at the University of Colorado in Denver, shows that the Monday immediately after Daylight saving time has a 25 percent increase in heart attacks. The study also showed that heart attacks decrease 21 percent after Daylight saving time ends. The increase in heart attacks are probably the result of the loss of sleep.
The next observance of Daylight saving time will be on November 1st, and you can "fall back" then and get an extra hour of sleep. However, on March 1st, be prepared to lose that hour as you "spring forward".
