Hey Mark, what time is it?
Hang on...
Let me just...
OK, let me just decode the...
It's the afternoon!
Welcome to Map Men.
- We're the men - and here's the map.
♫ Map Men, Map Men ♫ Map Map Map Men Men... Men
Back in the olden days, people would tell time by the sun.
- What time is it? - I don't know, I've gone blind.
But then, in the 18 somethings when they invented trains, suddenly it mattered what the exact time was.
One man famously travelled from London to Bristol by train, and then the time was ten minutes different
And then he missed his train home... or something like that. And so, standard time was invented.
For a short while, some towns were using both local time and railway time
but this confusing cluttery clock-up just made even more people miss their trains.
This is the east London suburb of Greenwich, where you don't pronounce the W or one of the Es.
And right here is the place where British standard time was standardised.
Since 11 o'clock in the morning on the 2nd of August 1880
it's been exactly the same time all across the British Isles - Greenwich Mean Time.
Greenwich Mean Time started a trend and soon became a standard the world over for your local country
to be a certain number of hours either behind or ahead of.
Here is a map showing all the time zones around the world.
Each bar is measured as the number of hours before or after Greenwich Mean Time, or UTC.
But as you can see, the lines are not straight.
They bend slightly around country borders as you might expect them to, but what we're interested in
is how they bend massively around weird things as you may well not expect them to.
So, here's our Map Men guide to the world's best time zone anomal-anomal-anomal-anomalies
China.
China is one massive time zone.
They've done this for unity and simplicity, but it has a few consequences.
If you cross the border from Afghanistan to China, time jumps ahead by three and a half hours.
Tea time! Dinner time! Tea time! Dinner time!
Secondly, and much more importantly, in Tibet in Winter, the sun doesn't rise until 10am.
Because of this, some people in Xinjiang have adopted their own local unofficial time zone
But the Han community who also live there refuse to recognise it.
All efforts to correct this have inevitably failed.
"Unity and simplicity" my front bottom.
'Murca!
In Arizona, there are some areas that do observe daylight savings, and some that don't.
This means that for half the year, driving through the state means you have to keep a close eye on your watch.
She's going to be OK... she's going to be OK...
*crying* I was too late! I couldn't save her in time!
Everybody's going to hate me because I...
Oh... Thank god... I'm going to make it!
I'll be a hero! She'll survive...
*cries*
Changing the hour is one thing, but the most curious curiosities happen
at the controversial and ever-changing International Date Line.
The line where Tuesday changes into Wednesday.
The Diomedes.
The Diomede Islands live here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
This one to the west belongs to Russia and is the furthest east you can go in the world.
And this one to the east belongs to America and is the furthest west you can go in the world.
The International Date Line spluts these two islands doon the muddle.
which means that even though they're only two and a half miles apart, there's a whole day between them.
During the Cold War, a woman called Lynne Cox swam from one to the other across the so-called Ice Curtain
drawing congratulations on her brave statement of peace.
Even though all she really wanted was for it not to be Monday.
- Kiri-batty - Kiribati (Kiribass)
- Really? - Yep. - Hmmm.
For many decades, Kiribati was on the right hand side of the date line
and they were the last people on the planet to do anything.
But this caused a problem.
Every Friday morning when the Kiribatians were eager to do business with their biggest trading partners - Australia,
The Aussies were sleeping off their Saturday morning hangovers.
Not now, Masina!
So on New Years Day 1995, they jumped across to the left hand side of the date line
Skipping a day ahead to join their business partners in hangoverland.
Why are you still calling me!?
This meant that Saturday 31st December 1994 never happened.
As a consequence of Kiribati changing from one side to the other
the International Date Line now looked like an Easter Island head.
- And their time-travelling tactic triggered a trend. - Bof!
In 2011, they were joined on the new side of the date line by the nation of Samoa.
- Sar-moa - Really? - No, I don't know.
That's what we love about the lines on this map - they don't show distance from Greenwich, semi-colon,
they show a rich tapestry of culture and allegiances.
The surprisingly sinuous zigs and zags of the world's time zones demonstrate that it is not time that controls us humans
- But rather us humans who control time. - Well...
- us humans who control time. - Well...
- us humans who control...
And paste, and paste, and paste, and paste...
Stop doing that!
Oh! Mrs. Doubtfire!
Yes! Got it in one.
My turn.
OK, four words...
Three words, sorry.
Circle?... the moon?... the sun...?
Circle? Circle sun!
Oh... "whole thing"
What are you doing?
What's that? I've never...
I've never seen anything like that before.
What? What?
Playing a piano and tapping a tiny man on the shoulder?
Phantom of the Opera!
Scarface, Little Women,
Fantasia, The Jungle Book
Les Miserables, Sound of Music
The Gospel According to St John? The Sound of Music?
Oh wait!
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All thanks to NordVPN. So, was I right?
No, it was You've Got Mail.
I love that film!
I've got it on DVD.
Ooh let's watch it now!