Time Zone Changes in History
2026-02-08 · 8 min read
Time zones and DST rules are political decisions, so they change more often than most people expect.
Major Modern Offset Changes
- Samoa (2011): skipped December 30, 2011, moving from UTC-11 to UTC+13 to align trade days with Australia and New Zealand.
- Kiribati (1995): moved Line Islands to UTC+14 so all islands shared the same calendar date.
- North Korea (2015 to 2018): created UTC+8:30 (Pyongyang Time), then returned to UTC+9.
- Venezuela (2007, 2016): moved to UTC-4:30 under Chávez, then back to UTC-4.
- Russia (2010 to 2014): reduced zones, ended DST, then restored 11 zones and permanent standard time.
- Turkey (2016): moved to permanent UTC+3.
- Morocco: keeps UTC+1 most of the year but pauses to UTC+0 during Ramadan.
How Standard Time Started
In the 1880s, railways made local solar times impractical for timetables. Sir Sandford Fleming promoted a global time-zone framework, helping drive international standard-time adoption.