It is that time of year again when we “spring forward” and set our clocks one hour ahead. Don’t forget to turn your clocks ahead one hour before going to bed. The time change officially starts Sunday at 2 a.m. local time. It isn’t observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, nor in most of Arizona. Remember that. It’s Daylight Saving Time, not “savings”.
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Originally devised by Benjamin Franklin, Daylight Saving Time was created to save expensive candle wax.
Why are there eight months of daylight saving each year?
People with diabetes and insulin pumps, forgetting to change the time on the pump could lead to dangerously low blood sugar. Implemented during World War I, it was primarily to save energy. Forget and you’ll be running behind time at dawn. He says because hormone releases are triggered by, among other things, time of day and amount of sunlight, changing both abruptly can cause undue stress on the human body.
Thunder Bay first adopted Daylight Saving Time in 1908, making it the first town in Canada to do so.
A handful of federal and private studies have found that only a small amount of energy is saved by switching to daylight saving time. The Englishman published the 1907 brochure “The Waste of Daylight” and spent much of his personal fortune evangelizing with missionary zeal for the adoption of “summer time”.
Further, a statistical analysis done in California found that the 2007 extension of daylight time had “little or no effect on energy consumption” in the state.
“Individuals with pre-existing sleep conditions such as insomnia or sleep apnea will have even more difficulties in adjusting to the change”, he said in a hospital news release.
So, right now, the most important part of Daylight Saving Time is to make sure you don’t add an “s” at the end of saving!
There’s a persistent myth that daylight time helps farmers when, in fact, the agricultural sector is among the most vocal critics of the practice.
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“Yes, there’s an increase in business, about 10 percent”, said Kim Mattera, manager of the Napa Valley Coffee Roasting Co. on Main Street.
