Time Zones - Information, Everyday Tips

Time Zones

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the time from which all 24 hour clocks in the world take their cue and have done so for centuries.

Everywhere else in the world is either GMT, or plus or minus GMT.

To complicate matters we turn the clocks back one hour at the end of October and one hour forward at the end of March to ensure maximum use of daylight, but GMT itself does not change.

Always useful to check time plus or minus GMT in the country you are telephoning, to be sure of a civil reception

Many years ago every town in UK had its own time, plus or minus GMT. Oxford was minus 5 minutes 2 seconds. To this day Great Tom, Christ Church College's famous bell ignores GMT at 9 pm but chimes 5 minutes later not nine, but 101 times, to commemorate the College's original 101 students. Possibly exhausted by this effort the bell then remains silent until 8 am next morning when it reverts to GMT