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4 Unexpected Places With Unique Time Zones

From half-hour offsets to countries that ignore geography altogether, these places prove the world’s clocks don’t always follow the rules.
ByJenny Cohen|
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We’re used to time zones changing by the hour, but for some places, the standard clock wall doesn't tell the whole story.
We’re used to time zones changing by the hour, but for some places, the standard clock wall doesn't tell the whole story. | Daronk Hordumrong/GettyImages

Greenwich, England, is best known for its role in setting the clocks of the world with Greenwich Mean Time. Time zones, for example, indicate how many hours ahead or behind they are compared to Greenwich Mean Time, while the International Date Line, the line of longitude at which a new day starts, is exactly on the opposite side of the world from Greenwich.

The Prime Meridian of the world, established in Greenwich in 1884, became the general standard for time with each of 24 time zones around the world marking their hours ahead or behind that meridian. Today, Greenwich Mean Time has been replaced by Coordinated Universal Time with the same concept: the Prime Meridian serves as the starting point for time zones around the world.

But not every place on the planet follows the hour-long time zone guidelines set by Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). In fact, there are several spots that have decided to create their own anomalies to the typical time zones, making time for unusual variations on the clock.

Newfoundland (UTC -3:30)

St. John's Homes on the Shore
The Battery neighborhood in St. John's sits within one of the world’s few half-hour time zones: Newfoundland Time. | KenWiedemann/GettyImages

Canada has six time zones including four that generally follow the similar time zones of the continental United States. And then there's Newfoundland. The island makes up part of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, as well as its own unique time zone. Residents of the island have clocks with an additional half hour offset, making it 12:30 p.m. on the island when most of nearby Labrador is noon.

Canada and the United States adopted their hourly time zones in 1883 to help standardize the times for the railroads, but as an island, Newfoundland wasn't connected to the mainland railroad system. So the island continued to have a variety of different times, depending on who was tracking it, until 1935, when it officially adopted the time zone with a half-hour offset. It will likely stay that way as well. There have been two major attempts to change the time zone, but both were rejected by residents.

Kiribati (UTC +13 and UTC +14)

Houses on stilts, Banraeaba, Ambo motu, South Tarawa, Kiribati
Homes in Kiribati sit in one of the world’s most unusual time zones—up to 14 hours ahead of UTC. | mtcurado/GettyImages

Kiribati is an island nation that stretches more than 1,800 miles across the Pacific Ocean. That large distance means the country has three different time zones, which wouldn't be unusual for some nations. But those three time zones straddle the International Date Line. In the past, it meant that some parts of the island nation would be operating on one day while others would be operating a day behind.

To solve its issue with the International Date Line, the island nation decided to push the imaginary dateline east of the island. But in doing so, it created two time zones that are now UTC +13 and UTC +14—more than half a day ahead of Coordinated Universal Time.

China (UTC +8)

Nanjing Road in Shanghai, China
Nanjing Road in Shanghai, where all of China runs on a single time zone. | Nikada/GettyImages

China spans more than 3,000 miles and could theoretically have around five time zones for the entire country. After all, the width of the continental United States is around 2,800 miles with four time zones. But the large land mass of China only has one.

In the first half of the 20th century, the country did in fact have five time zones. But in 1949, Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, decided the country should be covered by only one time zone, which is commonly known as Beijing Time. While it might make it easy to have the entire country on one time zone, there are issues with clock noon compared to solar noon, or when the sun is at its highest in the sky. Some western parts of the country, for example, may have solar noon occurring around 3 p.m. due to the same time zone covering the whole nation.

Nepal (UTC +5:45)

Ghandruk village
Ghandruk village in Nepal, where time runs 45 minutes off standard hourly zones. | Chunumunu/GettyImages

Nepal has an unusual time zone that's offset by 45 minutes from the hour, making it one of only three areas in the world to have this unique change, and the only nation to fully embrace this odd time offset. (Only a tiny part of Western Australia and the Chatham Islands in New Zealand can also boast of a three-quarters of an hour time difference to Coordinated Universal Time.)

Nepal had followed India's time zone, which itself has a half-hour offset and sits at UTC +5:30 from Greenwich. But when India's standard time was officially adopted after its independence in 1956, Nepal decided to be a little different, with a time zone that's only 15 minutes different from its neighbor.

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