Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, WV

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March 13, 2010

Unique tales spring forward with Daylight Saving

By BILL ARCHER Bluefield Daily Telegraph

BLUEFIELD — The phenomenon of Daylight Saving Time has made for some interesting stories through the years. One enterprising young man is said to have used the Standard Time unit of recording birth and death certificates in the state of Delaware and claimed a different birth date in order to get a higher draft lottery number and circumvent the Vietnam War era draft. Of course, some people playfully refer to the zero birth rate that occurs from 2 a.m., to 3 a.m., on the day that people move their clocks forward in the spring and some web sites report that people have rioted at the start of Daylight Saving Time because bar patrons lose an hour’s worth of time to consume alcohol. “I have never noticed an increase or a decrease in alcohol consumption either at the start of Daylight Saving Time or on the morning when Standard Time returns,” Chief J.W. “Joe” Wilson of the Bluefield Police Department said. Wilson worked his way up through the ranks in the department and has been on the scene of closing time at several bars in the city through the years. Daylight Saving Time arrives locally this Sunday morning at 2 a.m., as people in Four Seasons Country and citizens throughout the U.S. set their clocks forward an hour — costing many people to lose an hour of sleep on Sunday morning, but gain an hour of daylight from March 14 until Nov. 7. Daylight Saving Time has a storied history. The great U.S. statesman Benjamin Franklin, whose portrait appears on the $100 bill, suggested the idea of moving the clocks forward in the spring and back to standard time in the fall in order to provide an additional hour of daylight during the summer. The idea was slow to catch on, but in the late 18th Century when railroads in the U.S. needed a uniform time in order to maintain schedules, the nation adopted Standard Time in 1883. Although the U.S. experimented with Daylight Saving Time during both world wars, Daylight Savings Time didn’t become the law of the land until 1974. The present mid-March to early November DST period was introduced in 2007, replacing the former April to late October period that had been in place for several years. — Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com

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