Daylight saving change is less than a month away, get ahead of the clock with these ten facts:
1. Daylight Saving time began as a joke by Benjamin Franklin, who wanted to save candles by getting everyone out of bed earlier.
2. The Department of Energy estimates that electricity demand drops by 0.5 percent during Daylight Saving Time, saving the equivalent of nearly 3 million barrels of oil.
3. The true name for the practice is Daylight Saving time, not Daylight Savings time. ‘Savings’ with an ‘s’ is often used but the singular form of ‘saving’ is actually correct because the practice refers to ‘a time for saving daylight’, according to www.timeanddate.com.
4. Businesses that lobbied over the years to have daylight saving time implemented included tourism groups, golf courses and fast food joints. Seven weeks of daylight saving time increases golf revenue between $200 million and $300 million in the U.S., according to the National Golf Foundation.
5. Russia followed daylight saving time for 30 years until 2011. At the time, the government said it was getting rid of DST to reduce illness and stress for citizens.
6.Most countries near the equator don’t deviate from standard time.
7. Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and Queensland stay on standard time all year. This results in both vertical and horizontal time zones Down Under during the summer months.
8. Transitions into and out of DST can disturb people’s sleeping patterns and make them more restless at night. Night owls tend to be more bothered by the time changes than people who like mornings, Finnish researchers concluded in 2008.
9. There’s a spike in heart attacks during the first week of daylight saving time. The loss of an hour’s sleep may make people more susceptible to an attack, some experts say.
10.People are safer drivers during daylight hours, and researchers have found that DST reduces lethal car crashes and pedestrian strikes. A study concluded that observing DST year-round would annually prevent about 195 deaths of motor vehicle occupants and about 171 pedestrian fatalities.
