Most of Alaska uses Alaska Time, which spans three standard time zones.   The state used two time zones until 1983, when it placed the capital, Juneau, in the same time zone as the more populous Anchorage and Fairbanks.  China spans four time zones but uses only one.  The time difference between Bangkok, Thailand, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is one hour, although the two capitals are on almost the same longitude.  The Aleutian Islands, a spur of Alaska, and the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean are 3,750 km (2,330 mi) apart but lie at similar longitudes.  Hawaii–Aleutian Standard Time (HST) UTC--10 h; Hawaii does not observe daylight saving time.  The Alaskan Aleutian Islands observe Hawaii–Aleutian Daylight Time (HDT) UTC−9 h  UTC:  Coordinated Universal Time  Time zones around the world are expressed as positive or negative offsets from UTC or GMT (arguably the same as Coordinated Universal Time).  Local time is UTC and the time zone offset for that location, e.g., Eastern Standard Time (EST) = UTC −5 hours.  UTC replaced Greenwich Mean Time on 1 January 1972 as the basis for the main reference time scale or civil time in various regions.  One of the driving forces behind the development of time zones was the increasing use of faster modes of transportation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  In the US, much of the national rail network was completed by 1900.  In March 1918, Congress officially established the standard timekeeping system that is associated with this arrangement of time zones in the United States.   One of the driving forces behind the development of time zones was the increasing use of faster modes of transportation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  In the US, much of the national rail network was completed by 1900.  In March 1918, Congress officially established the standard timekeeping system that is associated with this arrangement of time zones in the United States.   Before the Industrial Revolution, when life was dominated by farming and artisan crafts, the times to sow, fertilize and harvest were important.  With the progress of technology and the sciences and as the world moved closer together through ever faster means of transport such as steamships and the railroad, people started to think about how to get the time problem under control.  Time zones are an invention of modern time.  Before the creation of standard time zones, every place had its own time.  With the spread of the telegraph and the construction of railroad networks in the 19th and early 20th centuries, communication and travel gained new dimensions--and new problems. Due to the lack of time standardization, it was difficult to coordinate train schedules on the mostly single-track lines; a signal at the wrong time could lead to fatal collisions.  Time zones became important in commercial air travel, especially for scheduling and coordinating flights. 

Before the introduction of time zones, there were between 140 and 300 different local time zones in North America.  As the story goes, a missed train in Ireland by Sandford Fleming led eventually to the creation of a coordinated Universal Time for the whole planet.  Fleming, a Scottish-born Canadian engineer, was one of the leaders in the effort to develop a worldwide system of keeping time.  He proposed a system of time zones in 1879 and presented it at several international conferences.  The British already had a standardized time.  In 1847, the national Railway Clearing Union ordered that Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) should apply at all railroad stations.  The British Post Office transmitted time signals from Greenwich by telegraph to most parts of the country to set the clocks.  Since 1875, Cleveland Abbe, an astronomer, meteorologist, and the first head of the U.S. Weather Bureau, had lobbied the American Meteorological Society (AMS) for a uniform standard time.  In October 1884, the International Meridian Conference was held in Washington, D.C., "for the purpose of fixing upon a meridian proper to be employed as a common zero of longitude and standard of time-reckoning throughout the globe international basis of civil and scientific time, was introduced.  The unit of UTC is the atomic second.  UTC replaced Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), based on the motion of the Earth, as the World Standard for time in 1972.  https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/US-timezone_map.htm#:~:text=Most%20of%20Alaska%20is%20in,(UTC%20%E2%88%92%2010%20h). 

Easy dessert:  sour cream on unfrosted chocolate cake   

The Oneida Community was a perfectionist religious communal society founded by John Humphrey Noyes and his followers in 1848 near Oneida, New York.  The Oneida Community practiced communalism (in the sense of communal property and possessions), group marriage, male sexual continence, Oneida stirpiculture (a form of eugenics), and mutual criticism.  The community's original 87 members grew to 172 by February 1850, 208 by 1852, and 306 by 1878.  There were smaller Noyesian communities in Wallingford, Connecticut; Newark, New Jersey; Putney and Cambridge, Vermont.  The branches were closed in 1854 except for the Wallingford branch, which operated until the 1878 tornado devastated it.  The Oneida Community dissolved in 1881, converting itself to a joint-stock company.  This eventually became the silverware company Oneida Limited, one of the largest in the world.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_Community    

December 13 is celebrated in the United States as the National Day of the Horse, which recognizes the contribution of horses to the economy, history, and character of the country.  It was established by a Senate resolution in 2004.    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2885  December 13, 2024