What's the timezone of Easter Island and why?

?--Percy

Is this a riddle?I found the answer pretty easily on Google.

Nope, no riddle. I just found out it has same timezone as New York (I'm reprogramming how the board handles timezones), just wondering why.Another fun fact: Isla Robinson Crusoe in the Pacific off the Chilean coast is at roughly the same longitude as New York City.--Percy

The same as New York?I thought I read UTC -6:00, which is what we use in Minnesota...ABE: As for why, it looks to be the same as Chile, which I believe governs Easter Island.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Very little of South America is west of NY. A globe really highlights the positioning of landmasses in the different hemispheres.Easter Island is the same longitude as western Colorado.

Google reports the Chilean timezone as -4 and Easter Island as -6.The PHP DateTimeZone database agrees with Google on the Chilean timezone, but not on the Easter Island timezone, which it reports as -5. Current Local Time in Easter Island, Chile agrees with PHP, but of course they'd agree, they're both programs. As Theodoric says, Easter Island's at about the same longitude as western Colorado. Sunrise on Easter Island is around 8 AM these days, about an hour and a half later than New York, but Easter Island is much closer to the equator than western Colorado, where sunrise is nearly 9 AM Easter Island time.--Percy

I apparently have no idea how to read a chart...I see my mistake.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Found this map site to be helpful. World Time ZonesEaster Island is one of the yellow dots off the west coast of S. America.Note how the -6 time zone line for the island is extended west almost into the -8 zone.Note also that, when you hover the cursor over the dots, Easter Island does not show a -6 time but a -5 time like New York.Humans. How crazy can you get?Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Love that timezone map. Checking some other locations I found additional mysteries:

• Santiago, Chile, is shown in the -4 timezone, but is currently on -3 time.
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• Brisbane, Australia, is shown in the +10 timezone and has a +10 time, but Sidney, Canberra, Melbourne and Hobart, all in the same +10 timezone, have a +11 time. And they're further west!
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• London, Paris, and Madrid are all in the 0 timezone, but only London has a 0 time. Paris and Madrid have a +1 time. Googling I see that London's on GMT (of course), while Paris and Madrid are on CET (Central European Time).

Can anyone explain what's going on? I'm just curious. The DateTimeZone database I'm using gets all the time offsets right for these cities, but why do timezone maps show cities in different timezones than the ones they're actually using? It can't be Daylight Savings Time, because no region in the world is on Daylight Savings Time yet (DST begins 3/8 in the US, 3/29 in the UK, France and Spain, 4/5 in Melbourne, and Brisbane doesn't use DST).--PercyEdited by Percy, : Clarify.

Sure.The Brits invented time so that their railways timetables would make sense. Before then each town kept its own time which were all different. But we then found that we couldn't make our trains run to time no matter how many clocks we had.Now we just make the best of it by messing everyone else's time up. I live right next to the Grenwich Meridian; every time I pass it I give it a good kick and it fucks up somebody's clock on the other side of the world.We might not have an Empire anymore, but we get to say what time you'll be on a semi-random basis.

It's Obama and his socialist time program, part of his plan for a socialist muslim takeover of the world ...Sometimes you just need to hit the | Do Nothing Button | ... and remember: coffee is to help you do the things you can do, and wine is to help you accept the things you can't.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

Hey, Tangel, friend, pal,I'm supposed to have a dental appointment next Thursday afternoon. If you would, kind sir, just happen upon the meridian, say about 7pm your time that day and, you know, just happen to stumble and accidentally kick the thing, several times, I could really use the excuse.Thanx, buddy.

Sure, no problem ;-)

This FAQ might explain some of those.
http://www.worldtimezone.com/faq.html

My favorite timezone adventure ever was back in the 1970's some time, when we drove through Kentucky. Kentucky has both Central and Eastern time zones, but that year they had "county option' on whether to have daylight savings time. So there was a mix of EST, EDT, CST, and CDT potentially all within a thirty-mile radius of any one spot.I think they fixed that the next year....