War, The EU, And The Year 2007: Why UK And US Clocks Go Forward On Different Dates
We’re weeks away from the clocks springing forward here in the UK – it’ll happen at 1am on Sunday, March 29.
Here, it always falls on the last Sunday in March. After that, British Summer Time, usually shortened to BST, begins.
But if your calendar has been telling you to prepare for earlier wake-ups sooner than that, it might be because it’s set to the US’ daylight saving times (DST) schedule.
When do the clocks go forward in the US and the UK?
This year, the US DST period starts on 2am Sunday, March 8, in most of the US (parts of Arizona and Hawaii don’t follow the same DST schedule).
That’s weeks before the UK’s BST begins, on Sunday, March 29.
Why do US and UK clocks go forward on different dates?
In both countries, the clocks going forward at all is a relatively new phenomenon.
Though America’s Benjamin Franklin first called for something like DST in 1784, UK builder William Willett was to furst to popularise it here.
But in the UK, it took until 1916 for us to adopt a form of BST. And we didn’t do that until the Germans did it first – we took up the policy weeks after them.
The US followed suit with DST after it joined the First World War. This came into place on March 31, 1918. Both the UK and US followed DST and “double summer time” during the Second World War, too.
In the postwar years, though, the US’ use of DST became less unified; some places observed it, and others didn’t. The UK also toyed around with BST.
But in 1996, the EU decided that too many differing time zones were inconvenient and expensive. So member countries, including, at the time, the UK, all took on the last Sunday in March as the date clocks went forward.
And while US law had said DST should be state-wide in 1966, it was only after the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that US DST was moved forward by about a month, starting in 2007.
Since 2007, the US DST time has started a couple of weeks before the UK’s and Europe’s, and has ended a week or so sooner, too.
Are daylight savings bad for us?
Heart attacks and accidents rise at the start of DST, some researchers say.
That’s part of the reason why some in both the EU and the US have called for their countries to abandon daylight saving time.
For now, though, our different dates remain.