Global time zones are messier than you think, data from 162 places shows
An analysis of 162 cities, countries, and regions using the IANA timezone database reveals that global time zones are far from a neat grid of whole-hour offsets. Eleven of the 162 places use non-whole-hour offsets, including Nepal's unique UTC+5:45, the only 45-minute offset in the dataset. Nearly half of all tracked locations — 75 out of 162 — never observe daylight saving time, including major cities like Tokyo, Dubai, and New Delhi. Four UTC offsets alone account for nearly half of all 162 places, with UTC−5 covering 25 locations and UTC+1 covering 21. The data underscores that time zones are political decisions rather than astronomical ones, spanning a total range of 22 hours from UTC−10 in Honolulu to UTC+12 in New Zealand and Fiji.
This is an AI-generated summary. ShortSingh links to the original source for the complete article.


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