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Set Your Clocks Back an Hour: Daylight Saving Time Ends Sunday Morning

By Nathan Ham

Everybody gets an extra hour of sleep this weekend with the end of Daylight Saving Time at 2 a.m. Sunday morning.

That does mean that it will get darker earlier on in the evening as winter approaches. On November 4, the sun will rise at 7:02 a.m. and will set at 5:18 p.m.

Daylight Saving Time was first used in Ontario, Canada in 1908 but really became popular in 1916 when Germany instituted Daylight Saving Time in for the entire country.

In the United States, Daylight Saving Time dates all the way back to March 31, 1918 when people first set their clocks forward an hour in the spring and back an hour in the fall. The belief was that Daylight Saving Time would allow for people to have more daylight to work in while also conserving energy. The initial rollout of Daylight Saving Time was not overly popular with some states and cities abiding by the time change and others not doing it.

It was not until the Uniform Time Act in 1966 that standardized the “spring forward and fall back” time change rules to April and October of each year. That changed to March and November of each year in 2007.

Today, 48 of the 50 states all participate in Daylight Saving Time with Arizona and Hawaii being the only remaining holdouts. Guam, Puerto Rico, U.S Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Marina Islands do not participate in Daylight Saving Time.

Daylight Saving Time is now used in over 70 countries and by over one billion citizens across the world.

Of course that may change in the near future. The European Union has proposed abolishing Daylight Saving Time in 2019. Florida has already passed a bill to abolish Daylight Saving Time, but the measure has to be approved by the United States Congress and, so far, that has not been the case. Voters in California will vote on Tuesday to decide whether they would like to see the state abolish daylight saving time. Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island have all proposed eliminating Daylight Saving Time but nothing has been set in stone and any state decision would have to be approved by the U.S. Congress.