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6 Interesting Facts About Daylight Saving Time

Daylight Saving Time begins tomorrow at 2:00 AM. Other than losing an hour of sleep and gaining some sunlight in the evenings, we didn’t know much about this annual ritual we do in New England.

After spending some time searching, we found some interesting facts we thought we’d share!

  1. The first American to advocate for daylight saving was Benjamin Franklin. He realized in 1784 that many people burned candles at night yet slept past dawn in the summer, wasting early-morning sunlight. (Source)
  2. Daylight saving time got its first widespread use during World War I. In 1916, Germany put itself on daylight saving time to save energy for the war effort. Britain quickly followed. When the United States joined the war in 1918, it instituted daylight saving time. (Source)
  3. Most of the country and its territories observe DST. However, DST is not observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and the state of Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Indian Reservation, which does observe DST). (Source)
  4. While twins born at 11:55 p.m. and 12:05 a.m. may have different birthdays, Daylight Saving Time can change birth order – on paper, anyway. During the time change in the fall, one baby could be born at 1:55 a.m. and the sibling born ten minutes later, at 1:05 a.m. In the spring, there is a gap when no babies are born at all: from 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m.
  5. Daylight saving time has mixed effects on people’s health. Transitions into and out of DST can disturb people’s sleeping patterns, for example, and make them more restless at night. Night owls tend to be more bothered by the time changes than people who like mornings, Finnish researchers concluded in 2008. (Source)
  6. Research shows that given an extra hour of evening daylight, many Americans use the time to go out and do things rather than watch the television shows they’d normally view at that time. Nielsen ratings during the hours impacted by the change show large declines during the first week of DST—as much as 10 to 15 percent, even for popular shows.