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What is the last place on Earth to celebrate the beginning of the New Year?
Question
#111834. Asked by Verbonica. (Jan 01 10 2:52 PM)
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looney_tunes
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A definitive answer to this question requires finding the Pacific island (or settlement in Antarctica or North America) closest to the east side of the International Date Line. I can find nothing of sufficient resolution to show it clearly.
This map shows that Samoa (as listed there) is a good candidate.
 http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/dateline.htm
This map shows more candidates, including islands between Alaska and Russia, but their names are not clear.
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/international_date.php
Actually, since the question doesn't specify that anyone has to live there, one could answer that there are an infinite number of places, but most of them involve swimming in the ocean to be there.
From this map, there are no Antarctic settlements very close at all to the right side of the line, but there is solid land touching the date line - you'd just have to organise the expedition, and have nothing else to do for a couple of months!
http://www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/InfoAntarctica.html
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kevinatilusa
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Two questions:
1. Wouldn't any place in the same time zone as American Samoa also celebrate the New Year as American Samoa? By that yardstick, American Samoa, The Midway Islands, and several other places all were in the first time zone east of the date line. (see http://www.worldtimezone.com/utc/utc-1100.html )
2. An alternative answer to this question would be places like China which don't follow the Gregorian calendar and have a different starting date for their New Year (the Chinese New Year isn't until February 14)
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davejacobs
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People at the Amundsen-Scott Base at the south pole can surely be first or last to experience any day, by just taking a step.
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