p. 148 | A CURIOUS FACT by C. W. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 10, 1877

“A CURIOUS FACT.”

By C. W. S.

“The readers of the Crisis may not appreciate the following, but I could not help being interested in knowing there is a line of latitude under the sun where the most zealous observer of holy days is compelled, in spite of himself, to keep both Saturday and Sunday, having no choice of his favorite day. I commend the article to thinkers. Here it is: P. T. T.

“THE PLACE WHERE THE SUN JUMPS A DAY.”

“Chatham Island, lying off the coast of New Zealand, in the South Pacific Ocean, is peculiarly situated, as it is one of the habitable points of the globe where the day of the week changes. It is just in the line of demarkation between dates. There high twelve on Sunday at noon ceases, and instantly Monday meridian begins. Sunday comes into a man’s house on the east side, and becomes Monday by the time it passes out the western door. A man sits down to his noonday dinner on Sunday, and it is Monday noon before he finishes it.

“There, Saturday is Sunday, and Sunday is Monday, and Monday becomes suddenly transferred into Tuesday. It is a good place for people who have lost much time; for by taking an early start they can always get a day ahead on Chatham Island. It took philosophers and geographers a long time to settle the puzzle of where Sunday noon ceased and Monday noon began, with a man traveling west fifteen degrees an hour, or with the sun. It is to be hoped that the next English Arctic expedition will settle the other mooted question, ‘Where will one stop who travels northwest continually?’”

The above appeared in the World’s Crisis of April 25. We are somewhat surprised that D. T. T. should commend to thinkers a statement so egregiously incorrect and so palpably absurd. It is true that there is a line where each day begins; but we have never before heard of the exact community where the calendar must be changed while the man of the house is enjoying his dinner, in order that it may indicate the true day of the week when he has finished.

But the question may be asked, Is it not a fact that on those islands lying in longitude 180 degrees east or west of Greenwich, where the day changes, the people do have to make this change in the name of the day at every noon? The writer of the above extract, whoever he may be, would answer yes; and D. T. T. concludes that those people would be unable to keep the whole of any one day,—that should they set out to keep Saturday, that day would vanish at noon, and the remainder of the day would be Sunday afternoon.

Before answering this directly, let us consider a few facts. Let a man, whom we will call A, start from the eastern coast of Asia, and travel westward, and another man, B, from the western coast of America travel eastward until they meet at London. If each has kept the reckoning of days correctly, and just as he would have done at home, he will have agreed in his reckoning with the inhabitants all along his route, and the two will agree when they meet. If they proceed until each arrives where the other started, they will still be in perfect harmony. Let them still continue. B takes the steamer at Yedo on one of the Japan Islands, and A embarks at San Francisco, and they meet anywhere on the Pacific Ocean, each having kept his own reckoning of the days as he would have done at home.

When they meet, A says it is Wednesday, but B says it is Thursday. They cannot agree, so they steam on until each arrives at home, A at Yedo and B at San Francisco, just a week, we will say, after the meeting in mid-ocean. A says to his Japanese friends, This is Wednesday; but they tell him it is Thursday. He finds that he has lost a day. He has traveled around the world from east to west, toward the setting sun, making the light part of every day longer, away from the rising sun, making the dark part of every day longer, so that when he gets home, he has seen the sun rise and set once less than his friends at home have witnessed it, although he can reckon up as many hours that have passed as they, for every day has been longer.

B, at the same time, thinks that it is Thursday; but his San Francisco friends tell him that it is Wednesday. He finds he has gained a day. He has traveled around the globe from west to east, toward the rising sun, making every day shorter, so that he has seen the sun rise and set once more since he left home than it has appeared to do at San Francisco.

Neither of these men found anything wrong in their reckoning until they met in the Pacific, and both found their reckoning all wrong when they reached home. The reader will notice also that although these men both reached home at the same instant, it appears that the day was decided to be Wednesday in San Francisco and Thursday in Yedo. When it is 5 o’clock P. M., Wednesday, at San Francisco, it is thirty minutes past ten A. M., Thursday, at Yedo. The school-boy can reckon this at home. He finds that Yedo is 262½ degrees from San Francisco, reckoning eastward from the latter. Every 15 degrees makes a difference of one hour in time; therefore the difference in time between these two places is 17½ hours. At any place east of San F., it is later in the day than at San F. Thus, the sun rises in Boston 3 h. 25 m. before it does in S. F., and when it is noon at San Francisco, it is 3 h. 25 m. later in Boston. So at Yedo it is 17½ hours later in the day, as the sun rises there 17½ hours before it rises at S. F. Then when it is 5 P. M., Wed., at S. F., 17½ hours later make it 10:30 A. M., Thursday, at Yedo.

Bear this result in mind a moment, and observe that we have run our reckoning over the same line that A and B traveled in perfect harmony as to the days of the week. Let us reckon across the Pacific. From S. F. westward to Yedo it is only 97½ degrees, which gives a difference in time of 6½ hours. Now as we reckon west we find it earlier in the day. When it is noon in Boston, it is 35 m. past 8 in the morning at S. F. So at Yedo it is 6½ hours earlier than at S. F.; therefore when it is 5 P. M., Wednesday, at S. F., it is half past ten A. M., Wednesday, at Yedo. It cannot be both, yet in both cases the figures are correct. The difficulty is on the Pacific Ocean, where A and B found it; and it is just this: A new day has commenced there, and our last reckoning must be set ahead one day, when it will be right.

Thus it is seen that one can neither cross the Pacific, nor reckon time across it, without changing a day one way or the other in the result. The mariner understands this, and every vessel that crosses the Pacific adds a day to its reckoning if going westward, and drops back a day if going eastward. This change of time is generally made on crossing the 180th degree of longitude reckoned from Greenwich. The vessel is provided with a chronometer which indicates the exact time at Greenwich near London. The mariner learns his time of day by taking an observation of the heavenly bodies. When he finds that his time varies just twelve hours from the chronometer, he knows that he is just half way round the world from Greenwich. At this point he changes the reckoning of the days. If it is Wednesday, and he is going west, he calls it Thursday; if he is going east, he calls it Tuesday; and in both cases, he comes out in harmony with the people where he lands.

But this particular line is arbitrary. Somewhere while crossing that ocean the day must be changed. Just where this should be done, is a point that is left to be settled by the best reasoning. As far as the crossing of the ocean is concerned, it might not matter particularly whether the change were made in the midst of the ocean or nearer either coast.

The day was given to Adam and Eve in the Eastern Continent. It commenced east of them; and as the inhabitants spread out over Asia, they found no discordant clash in the reckoning of the days. The pilgrims brought the day to this continent from the east, and it has kept on its even way across to the Pacific. God, who made the world to be inhabited, has so ordered it that in no land is there a division or break of time such as would result if the day line run through the midst of the United States; and even that most used ocean, the Atlantic, may be freely inhabited by neighboring ships, without any disagreement as to the day of the week. It would seem, then, that that line that marks the commencement of each new day should run from pole to pole without crossing habitable land. Such a line may be drawn through Behring’s Straits. It would touch no land unless possibly some very small islands in the midst of the Pacific, and would be about 168 degrees west of Greenwich. The inhabitants of all islands east of that line should number the days of the week with Americans; those west, with the Japanese. Let the islands agree with the continents in whose latitude they lie.

Now we will answer the question proposed near the outset. Suppose the day line to run through Chatham Island. There would even then be no difficulty in a man’s keeping holy the whole of any day he might choose. There would be no changing of a day. That is reserved for those who cross the line. Should the steamer come up to the line, and stop the captain need never change the day. But suppose a house stands on that line, and a family lives in each end of it. It is Monday in the east end all day, while at the same time it is Tuesday in the west end. It is Sunday all day in the west end, and the next day it is Sunday all day in the east end. If a man did not want to keep Sunday, he could cross the line till Sunday at home was over, and just ready to take him on the other side, then he could cross back. He could dodge the Sabbath in the same way, crossing the line back and forth as a man might, who had stolen a horse in Canada and another in the States.

But no such place exists. God has carefully provided that his holy Sabbath may be kept, even on a round world. People should be in better business than creating in their own minds an imaginary obstacle to prevent the far-off heathen’s keeping the true Sabbath, over which to stumble into perdition themselves. The meridian lying 180 deg. from Greenwich is entirely an arbitrary line, and does not necessarily mark the point where the day begins, as the writer of the above note evidently supposes it to do. Some navigators reckon by the meridian of Paris, others by that of Madrid, and others by that of Washington.

The meridian 180 deg. from Greenwich would serve a very good purpose, however, were it not that it crosses the eastern point of Asia. As for Chatham Island, which we are told lies “just in the line of demarkation between dates,” its extreme western border is not far enough west by 2⅔ degrees to touch that line. It is a productive island, about 90 miles in circumference; but it lies more than a hundred miles too far to the east to present even the imaginary necessity of keeping a part of two days, or of requiring more than one day for a Sunday dinner. There is nothing so very “curious” about a “fact” that does not come within a hundred miles of the truth. C. W. S.