It's time to spring forward! Daylight saving time 2021 begins at 2 a.m. this Sunday, March 14, which means you'll set your clock to 3 a.m. at that time.
Although modern DST has only been used for about 100 years, ancient civilizations are known to have engaged in comparable practices thousands of years ago. For example, the Roman water clocks used different scales for different months of the year to adjust the daily schedules to the solar time.
Many sources also credit Benjamin Franklin with being the first to suggest seasonal time change. However, the idea voiced by the American inventor and politician in 1784 can hardly be described as the reason for the development of modern DST. It really didn't involve turning the clocks. In a letter to the editor of the Journal of Paris, which was entitled “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light”, Franklin simply suggested that the French people could save on candle usage by simply getting out of bed earlier in the morning. In reality: Franklin meant it as a joke.
The first city in the world to enact DST was Port Arthur in Ontario, Canada. That happened on July 1, 1908. The first countries to adopt DST were part of the German Empire and Austria-Hungary on April 30, 1916. This was done to conserve coal during wartime.
Daylight saving time is now used in over 70 countries worldwide and affects over one billion people every year. The beginning and end dates vary from one country to another.
Contrary to popular opinion, daylight saving time doesn't last for half the year. Rather, it stretches approximately eight months and will come to an end on Sunday, Nov. 7, 2021. It's been that way since 2007 when Congress declared that daylight saving time begins in the United States on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.
On the other hand, daylight saving time isn't observed the same way -- or at all -- in some parts of the United States. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 standardized time zones and daylight saving practices, but it allowed individual states to pass laws exempting themselves. Arizona and Hawaii are the only states that do not observe the time change.
