At midnight between Thursday December 29 and what should have been Friday December 30, 2011, Samoa crossed the International Date Line. Clocks rolled from 23:59 Thursday to 00:00 Saturday. A whole calendar day ceased to exist for the roughly 190,000 people living on the island.

No Samoan was born on December 30, 2011. No one died. No contracts were signed, no anniversaries celebrated, no debt payments made. The day simply did not happen.

This is why.

1892: going back in time

To understand 2011, you have to start in 1892.

Samoa sits in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and in the late 19th century the island was an important trade waypoint. Most of Samoa’s commercial activity was conducted with California and Australia. Merchants needed a common reference for dates.

In 1892, an American merchant named H.J. Moors and the Samoan King Malietoa Laupepa agreed to shift the calendar to align with the United States. This meant crossing the International Date Line in the other direction: going back from the western side of the line to the eastern side.

On July 4, 1892 (chosen to be American Independence Day, a marketing touch), Samoa observed the date July 4 twice. The calendar reset. Samoa moved from the Asian/Australian side of the date line to the American side.

This put Samoa at UTC-11, about 11 hours behind UTC, on the same calendar day as Los Angeles and near-synchronized with San Francisco’s business hours. For an economy oriented toward California, it made sense.

Samoa sat at UTC-11 for 119 years.

2011: going forward in time

By 2011, the world had changed. Samoa’s economy was no longer oriented primarily toward the United States. Its main trading partners were now Australia, New Zealand, China, and other Pacific nations, all of which are on the western side of the date line.

Being on the American side of the line meant that when it was Monday in Sydney, it was Sunday in Samoa. When Auckland was working on Tuesday, Samoa was still on Monday. The two-day weekend in Samoa missed overlap with the working week in Australia and New Zealand for three days out of every seven.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi announced in May 2011 that Samoa would cross the date line again, this time moving to the west. The rationale was explicitly economic: Samoa does business with Australia and New Zealand. We should be on their time.

On December 29, 2011, Samoa moved. Clocks skipped forward. UTC-11 became UTC+13 (which is the same moment as UTC-11 but on the next calendar day). December 30 was erased.

The international date line was, in a sense, moved around Samoa and its neighbor Tokelau simultaneously.

What it was like

Samoans who were alive on December 29, 2011 woke up the next morning and it was December 31. The government had officially warned everyone. Businesses had prepared. But there was something surreal about going to sleep on a Thursday and waking up on a Saturday.

Workers were paid for the missing Friday, by law. No one lost wages, legally, for a day that did not exist. Some people whose birthdays fell on December 30 found themselves without a birthday that year; some chose December 29, some December 31.

A small number of Samoans living in American Samoa (a separate US territory that did not make the same change) experienced the peculiar situation of being able to call their relatives 25 miles away and speak to them on a different calendar day.

American Samoa: same place, different day

American Samoa, located about 70 kilometers east of Samoa proper, did not follow. American Samoa remains at UTC-11, on the eastern side of the international date line.

The result: Samoa and American Samoa share an ocean, a culture, a language, and family connections across the water, but they are now on different sides of the date line. When it is Tuesday in Samoa, it is Monday in American Samoa. You can fly between them in under an hour and cross a calendar day.

This is, by any measure, one of the stranger geographic facts in the contemporary Pacific.

UTC+13 and DST

Samoa now observes UTC+13 in winter and UTC+14 during daylight saving time. UTC+14 is the furthest ahead of UTC that any place on Earth observes; it means Samoa is 14 hours ahead of London in summer, or equivalently, it is the first place in the world to observe each new year.

This created another distinction: Samoa, along with Kiribati’s Line Islands, is consistently among the first places to ring in the New Year. Marketing the island as the place where the new year arrives first has become a feature of Samoa’s tourism narrative.

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